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HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 





Healing in the 
Churches 


by 
FRANCIS M. WETHERILL, M.A., D.D. 


Rector of the Church of St. John the Baptist, 
Germantown, Philadelphia, Pa. 


Introduction by 


Rt. Rev. Ethelbert Talbot, D.D., LL.D > 


Presiding Bishop of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church 


New York CHICAGO 
Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, 1925, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


Printed in the United States of America 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


} To My People in the 
Church of St. John the Baptist, 
Germantown, Pa. 





Introduction 


HE subject of the ministry of healing is well 
presented in this volume in a sane and sen- 


sible manner. On account of a long and 

close friendship with the author I am pleased to 
commend it to the public, and trust it will have the 
wide reading this study of so timely and important 
a phase of the work of the churches deserves. The 
author’s research, experience, and interests equip 
him to handle this topic in a way that will prove 
instructive and spiritually stimulating to many. I 
have enjoyed reading the manuscript before pub- 
lication and believe there are within and without 
the Church countless numbers who are seeking just 
the help and knowledge this examination of the 
history and progress of faith-cures will supply. 
Bible and bibliographical references are copious 
and illuminating, which lend authority to the work. 
As to the author, I may say that as my former 
Warden of Leonard Hall, and his associations with 
men of letters at the Universities of Pennsylvania, 
Lehigh and Columbia he has had exceptional op- 
portunities to investigate the modern health move- 
ments from a scholar’s viewpoint, combined with 


a shepherd’s relation to his flock. His work in the 
7 


8 INTRODUCTION 


Red Cross Hospitals overseas, and assignment as 
Prison Chaplain in the First Army, American Ex- 
peditionary Force, furnish him with a rich fund 
from which to illustrate his thesis that the ministry 
of faith is a function of the Church in combating 
sin. His sincerity of purpose cannot be questioned; 
nor his evidences of the influence of Jesus Christ 
among us denied. That my friend’s presentation 
may be helpful to a closer understanding among all 
Christians, and may hasten the day when they all 
shall be one, and visualize their common and uni- 
versal heritage in their Lord and Master; that the 
prayer of faith shall save the sick, is my reason for 
the commendation of this book. 


ETHELBERT TALBOT. 
Bethlehem, Pa. 


Contents 


CHAPTER I 


PAGH 


FaItH HEALING THROUGH THE AGES . . .. 15 


I 


2 
3 
4 


I. 


Antiquity of Healing 

New Testament 

Power and Authority 

Cures of Christ in New Testament 


CHAPTER II 
METHODS OF CHRISTIAN HEALING . . . . 37 
In the Acts 
. Anointing 
. Liturgies 


oO ONT DN BW N 


. Prayer of Faith 
. Laying-on-of-Hands 


Relics 


. Healing in the Historic Church 
. Idealism 

. Present-Day Practices 

IO. 
. Emmanuel Movement 

. Coué, Preaching, and the Nancy School 
. Suggestive Therapeutics 

. Modern Miracles 


Christian Science 


9 


10 CONTENTS 
CHAPTER III 


HEALING IN Its SPIRITUAL ASPECTS . 
1. Combating Sin 
2. Conversion 
3. Disease a Source of Sin 


CHAPTER IV 


HEALTH AS AN AID TO CHARACTER FORMATION . 


1. Health and Feeling Well 

. Commonsense Therapeutics 

. Mental Hygiene and Morals 

. Heart to Heart 

. The Tyranny of the Past bs 
. God Our Supply 


Om Bh W bp 


PAGE 


II5 


Preface 


HEN strangers stop me on the street and 
inquire: “Do you have Christian Science 
in your church?” I always and invariably 

reply: “Yes.” It certainly would mislead them if 
I said: ‘‘No.” The man on the street, or the man 
about town, or the woman in the pew, all from the 
same homeless boarding-house I suppose, generally 
indulge in comprehensive titles, and in this respect 
“Christian Science” is to them an all-inclusive term 
for modern health movements with a religious twist 
to them. Quite erroneously, but nevertheless pop- 
ularly, Christian Science is held responsible for 
more sins than it ever dreamed of. 

Faith-cures, suggestive therapeutics, the psycho- 
analysis of Freud, Jung or Coué, and the ecclesias- 
tical pioneers like Worcester, Hickson, and Wilson 
represent types of healing which command a unity 
of respect among psychologists, but a diversity of 
classification and names. From the most sensa- 
tional revivalism of Echo Park to the dignified and 
churchly Society of the Nazarene I have heard (by 
the uninformed, of course) this whole gamut of 
psychotherapy termed “Christian Science.” Mrs. 
Eddy, if living, would disclaim that. So would all 


the other healers in their several churches and 
Il 


12 PREFACE 


schools. Most of these persons refuse to be called 
healers, pointing to Jesus Christ as the Great 
Physician. 

In America, most of this work is being done 
under the auspices of the Churches. Therefore it 
is Christian. The methods employed in these 
Churches and other institutions are based upon 
scientific investigations and observations. It there- 
fore seems opportune to entitle our findings of what 
Christians are doing to combat sin through their 
cures as Christian Healing. 

By this title I do not infringe upon any of the 
lectures given by Divine Science, Christian Science, 
New Thought, Centers of Truth and Unity, Ethical 
Culture, Zionism and Theosophy, with all of which 
I am quite familiar in theory and practice. I am 
not entering this subject in any controversial spirit. 
I do desire to show very clearly and convincingly 
one need not leave the Church to receive benefits 
of healing according to the principles of the New 
Testament. 

It is my earnest desire that the readers of these 
chapters may comprehend the significance of the 
fact that no miraculous cures are on record where 
the subject was living in sin (darkness, lawlessness, 
unhappiness) at the time of healing. The chief 
purpose of this study, Healing in the Churches, is 
to explain the ministry of the Church in combating 
sin. Hence these pages are arranged in such se- 
quence as will aid individuals in holding to their 


PREFACE 13 


Churches and cooperating with them for the pro- 
motion of personal and social conquest of true light 
and happiness in body, mind and morale. 

This discussion of healing, as God gives us aid 
to exercise the curative and corrective principle of 
the Gospel herein explained, has the support of 
F. T. Mayer-Oakes, Ph.D. (Clark University), a 
professor of research psychology, trained by Dr. 
G. Stanley Hall. In an unsolicited approval, he 
says: “You have a splendid foundation for the 
study of this special work. You have done exceed- 
ingly fine work. It has been examined with par- 
ticular care, and we want to offer you just com- 
mendation for your grasp of the field in which you 
have been working. I am sure this treatise would 
be popular and useful in groups and guilds of health 
and life.” 

The experiences, statistics and conclusions herein 
included are the outcome of participation in healing- 
missions, bedside-prayers and health classes. A 
personal expression of gratitude is due to Mrs. 
Ernest Moses, leader of the Health Class in my 
own Church, and, above all, to the ever-present 
Lord of life and glory who has answered our pray- 
ers and filled, satisfied and redeemed hungry souls 
through the laying-on-of-hands at our monthly 
healing services. 


F. M. W. 
Church of St. John the Baptist, 
Germantown, Pa. 


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I 
FAITH HEALING THROUGH THE AGES 


I. ANTIQUITY OF FAITH HEALING 


O one need suppose that healing by faith 
and prayer originated with any Christian 
or scientist of modern times. The thera- 

peutic value of faith and religion is clearly evi- 
denced in the Old Testament. The earliest refer- 
ence to faith healing in the Bible is in the seven- 


Perna 


teenth verse of the twentieth chapter of Genesis? ~~ 
“So Abraham prayed to God; and God healed « 
Abimelech, and his wife, and his maidservants.” 
God answered that prayer of faith more than four if 
thousand years ago. | 
Moses healed his sister Miriam from leprosy by 
the power of prayer. More strictly speaking, we 
should say the healing power of nature (God) 
caused her to be cured. . By the same means, 
Elijah and Elisha cured the sick and brought back 
the dead to life. The eleventh chapter of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews rehearses a long line of 
events in ancient times of the revitalizing power 


eS 


of their extremity. As the flower turns its face 
ar fe 





16 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


toward the sun for life and growth, so does normal 
man appreciate the presence and unseen source of 
all life and creation. But the flowers have not been 
in the custom through the ages of turning toward 
God only one morning in the week or solely in the 
hour of pain, ill-health and danger. The Old Testa- 
ment throws the searchlight on characters who have 
been trained by prayer in utilizing the presence and 
the power of God to cooperate with their fuller and 
more harmonious life. 

The God of the patriarchs was not a new God, 
but a newer revelation to the spiritually awakened 
consciousness of Him who breathed into man the 
breath of life. Abraham conceived the idea of the 
oneness of the universe, or the unity of causation. 
The Talmud informs us his father was a maker of 
idols for pagan deities. The boy saw there many 
“gods” in the workshop. Gods of war, harvest, 
fertility, love, etc., caused the friend of Jehovah 
to revolt against polytheism. So he left his native 
land and journeyed to a far country where he could 
worship one true God. Abraham instructed his son 
Isaac in the same unifying conception of deity. In 
one God his son Jacob, also, could have implicit 
faith. Not only do we read in the Old Testament 
of the operation of faith upon the welfare of the 
individual, but its effect on the saving of life and 
control of the animal kingdom as exhibited in the 
story of Daniel in the furnace and the den of lions. 

The Psalms are peculiarly rich in literature re- 


FAITH HEALING 17 


lating to our subject. The twenty-third, usually 
termed the Shepherd Psalm, contains extracts in 
almost every phrase and line revealing the remedial 
and sustaining value of faith in God. “He shall 
restore my soul” and thereby assist me to go forth 

“paths of righteousness for his name’s sake’’ is 
the victory over sin through the ministry of healing 
faith. Again, the ninety-first Psalm is pregnant 
with fundamental ideas respecting faith. Whoso 
retains faith in God shall not be afraid nor suffer 
from (verse 6) “the pestilence that walketh in 
darkness, nor for the sickness that destroyeth in 
the noonday.”’ Not only long life but a one expect- 
ant of honors in this world by virtue of their faith 


is assured us in this psalm. In Psalm 103: 3: We | 


read of One “who forgiveth all thy iniquities, who 
healeth all thy diseases.” In every psalm of the 


one hundred and fifty I can find some reference, | 


either direct or indirect, to the effect of faith upon 
morals, or, in other words, the Church’s work in 
restoring health and combating sin. Here we may 
add that scarcely any worship is ever held in any 
public place under the auspices of the Protestant 
Churches but what a psalm, or portion of a psalm, 
is read by the people. Hence, in this way the 
Churches are functioning to create in the minds of | 


the people the source of health and morals “ih oie : 


Supreme Being. 


The religion of philosophy and study of com-~ 


parative religions such as the recent compilation 


i 
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18 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


of essays by Dr. J. A. Montgomery in his Religions 
of the Past and Present discloses the antiquity of 
faith healing. Although it is not written in any 
sense for that purpose, we glean information from 
Confucius, Zoroaster, and Buddha how to make 
the soul dominate and transcend the body. Fur- 
thermore, these religious leaders trained their fol- 
lowers before our Christian era in the paths of 
peace and mental balance, and to a state of mind 
beneficent to health and normal life superior to 
self-indulgence and sins of the flesh. ‘The religions © 
of Greece, Rome, Scandinavia and Islam, although 
widely contrasted types, have a common denomi- 
nator in the power of religion to create and effect 
the welfare of the body through belief in their 
primitive teachings. The famous quotation from 
Job, ‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust him,” 
is typical of the abiding faith resident in the re- 
ligion of the Hebrews sufficient to carry the patient 
through all ills and adversities. The ancient re- 
ligions of Egypt and India we might suppose would 
be the least productive of faith to sustain life and 
health, for they are primarily concerned with im- 
mortality. Nevertheless, we have authority for the 
fact in Perrin’s Religion of Philosophy, in the chap- 
ter on mysticism and idealism, that faith not only 
assuages sorrow, cures the broken heart, but creates 
life. Speaking of the antiquity of faith healing, 
we therefore refer to the oldest religious story in 
the world—that of the myth of Osiris. Five thou- 


FAITH HEALING 19 


sand years before the beginning of our era Osiris, 
a mythological king of Egypt, was worshiped after 
his reign of goodness and plenty. He suffered tem- 
porary death, and while absent his wife, Isis, the 
maternal goddess of Egypt, sought him, sorrowing, 
until upon finding the dead body after a long trip 
around the world, the recovery of the king’s body 
by faith in its divine power miraculously conceives 
ason. Thus Horus, begotten and born after death 
through tears and faith, is the living image of his 
father and becomes the Egyptian savior of human- 
ity. He was born in winter, and the celebration of 
this miracle of faith was the time taken over by the 
Egyptian Christians for the celebration of Christ- 
mas. 

We are not here concerned with myth and legend 
so much as the antiquity and vital urge of faith. 
Primitive religions such as belong to our American 
Indian and the aboriginal tribes of Australia abound 
in superstition and mystery. Faith in an unseen 
power, which is negative in character, results in 
superstition. Relics of this survive in charms re- 
sorted to by the Negro race, the fear of ghosts 
and spirits relegated to certain localities, and the 
statuette of St. Anthony or Scapula of the Latin 
Church which, if worn on the person, drives away 
all dangers from the faithful and keeps one out of 
accidents and free from plagues and epidemics. I 
do not vouch for the scientific evidence of this, but 
merely offer it as a negative result in primitive 


20 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


religions provocative of superstition. The positive 
result of faith in ancient religions is mysticism and 
morality, which are conducive to health and human 
welfare. 


2. NEW TESTAMENT 


The The Gospels contain seventy-four references to 
where - ‘Jesus Christ - healed either multitudes or in- 
dividuals. To my_t best ability I can count two 
hundred and seventy-six persons who are reported 
to have been cured, if we grant that a “multitude” 
consisted of at least ten persons. Doubtless it had 
the same signification that the word crowd has 
today. Hence there were innumerable people whom 
Christ healed. Some were not in His presence when 
they received the cure. ‘Twenty-three maladies 
were overcome. | These numbers convince us of 
the importance which our Lord placed upon faith 
and the effects of faith upon the body and soul. | 

Sickness and suffering are, in the teaching of the. 
New Testament, alien to God’s mercy. ‘They are 
not primarily designed for our moral and spiritual 
progress. Christ never shows it is good for us to 
be sick. He cures Peter’s wife’s mother, for ex- 
ample, that she may attend to her duties. Others 
were cured by Him, apparently, that they might 
fulfill their religious obligations in the Temple and 
elsewhere. He showed forth His love by stimulat- 
ing sufficient faith to heal. | The spiritual value of 


FAITH HEALING 21 


suffering and ill health is ficticious, a theory built 
up ip outside the ‘facts a and experiences recorded in 
the Gospels. H. B. Wilson, in Does Christ Still 
Heal? has well said: “It is not by virtue of the 
pain, nor through the value of the deformity that 
they develop and grow. It is in spite of it. God 
is vindicated in many cases by His power over evil 
and pain when the patients use their ‘cross’ as a 
ladder to mount to sweeter character and resilient 
faith.” 

Sickness enters our life from an evil source con- 
trary to God’s love for man. But God’s power is 
greater than that of all opposing forces. From 
accidents to martyrdom God’s power to restore life 
proclaims his power over pain and evil. Those who 
suffer deformity may do good in other ways than 
they had set out to do. The Federal Board of 
Vocational Occupation, in rehabilitating the vet- 
erans, demonstrates the moral value of surmounting 
bodily handicaps for the greater good of the indi- 
vidual soldier and of the nation. Likewise, the 
Church has an opportunity to redirect the disabled 
and the sick to perform duties,and render service 
to the community for the common good. We can- 
not b believe God produces good through cruelty. 
Can we imagine him doing evil and causing lives ¢ of 
pain that good might result? The means would not 
“justify the end. God does not want crushed bodies 
nor maimed intellects. He says: “Son, give.me 
thine heart.” The New Testament through Christ 


22 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


reveals God as spoken of in I John 4:4: “Greater 
is he that is in you than he that is in the world.” 

Only in one instance does Christ employ any 
material aid. This was the making of clay with 
spittle and dust and placing it on the eyes of the 
blind man. In another case He moistens His fin- 
gers with saliva, touches the tongue and inserts His 
fingers in the. ears. He tells the disciples His 
method, and that theirs should be that of prayer 
and fasting.{ Although He nowhere orders the dis- 
continuance of drugs, in all the: _these cases. their_1 “use 
becomes no longer necessary. Nor does Christ find 
fault with those who take medicines. 

One of the best authorities upon the subject of 
miracles is Archbishop Trench. He is very fair 
and candid in his literal treatment of these miracles 
of healing as actual occurrences. His footnotes 
symbolize and sermonize by giving a moral inter- 
pretation. Many preachers do the same in such 
phrases as “palsy of conscience,” “dumb to sing 
His praises,’”’ “deaf to His word,” “the leprosy of 
sin.” 
has an illustrative value in the combat against sin. 
We are not here concerned with superficial preach- 
ing, but with the profound moral change of the 
‘whole man. In an expositor’s dictionary of texts 
I find such an outline of the current attitude toward 
the ministry of healing. I shall briefly summarize 
St. Matt. 11:4-5: 


reo 


hjckor-Cu 


By type and symbol the ministry of healing 


FAITH HEALING 23 


Blind: Mind left to itself. without the touch of Christ 
is in darkness. 

Lame: Free from sensuality we walk in newness of 
life. 

Lepers: Be cleansed from the leprosy of pride. 

Deaf: Spiritual deafness follows from desire for 
things of the world. 

Dead: Spiritual death pursues deadly sins. 

The Poor: The worldly poor ofttimes are the spir- 
itually rich. 


This is the popular way of treating miracles of 
healing of the New Testament. I accept the truth 
of it in so far as it goes. Its function is to be 
accredited by those in the ministry who strive to 
eradicate sin by this method of figurative exposi- 
tion. |With no desire to condemn the metaphorical 
aspect of these lessons, I may say they divest the 
Bible students’ minds from a literal perception of 
the healing miracles. 

“In In_this world ye shall have tribulation” is_a 


statement which some take as show wing God’s p PUDT Ny 
ishment. Many innocent people have suffered 


through the faults of others nd considered their 

Chastisement from the Lord. Such a doctrine is ~ 
absolutely contradictory to the teaching of Christ. 

It cannot be brought out from Christ’s teaching that 
God punishes us by sending sickness. The beatitude 
does not say our Heavenly Father blesses us by 
being reviled and persecuted. If that were so, then 
it would be a religious art to seek such punishment. 
Physical punishment is not even threatened the 


24 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


sinful. “He is kind to the unthankful and to the 
evil.” God does rebuke us by bringing before us 
matters of the soul which are wrong. Hebrews 
12:5 does say: ‘“My son, despise not thou the 
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art 
rebuked of Him,” and the writer goes on to say: 
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” Ex- 
amine the context. The Hebrew Christians were 
being exhorted, in the eleventh chapter, to works of 
faith through example. In the twelfth chapter they 
are told to carry on this faith with perseverance 
in the face of persecution and shame and martyr- 
dom.| They had no application to ill health nor 


- diseaSe, nor can these texts be twisted from their 


contexts to infer their meaning has aught to do with 
sickness or pain or divine punishment. Such an 
interpretation as rendered by the early schoolmen 
is an assault upon reason, and the inserting of 


_ theories contrary to the author’s purpose. 


Pain and sickness have often been related to 
Christ’s suffering on the Cross. Devout souls, since 
the days of the early hermits dwelling on lonely 
isles and in monasteries, have thought they did God 
service by inflicting pain and hardship upon them- 
selves. Christ’s command to heal the sick by and 
through faith contradicts all false theology that 


, Christ sends sickness upon us. In teaching this the 
' Church can perform a valuable function in off- 


setting the malicious practice of torturing penances 
still exercised by certain priests. Christ did not 


jf 


FAITH HEALING 25 


desire sanctification through suffering, but holiness 
through health. In spite of suffering faith does 
sanctify the believer, but pain tends to embitter. 

Those whom our Lord healed glorified God, _not. 
because they had ¢ d endured, but because e they were. 
freed_ from from misery. ~ They stretched out to touch 
Him. “They were inspired by His 3 presence. He 
does not make an example of their fortitude through 
sicknéss, but of their public testimony of their faith 
in the Son of Man. This faith brought peace to 
their souls, vigor to their bodies, character to their 
distorted minds. 

True it is, that we are called upon to bear our 
cross like the Master. Christ, for the joy that was 
set before Him, endured the Cross, not for the sake 
of getting sick over it. The Gospels declare the 
disciples go forth with boldness to preach the word 
“with signs following.” ‘Their work, similar to that 
of Jesus Christ, was directly in opposition to disease 
and distress. The text that we are to take Christ’s 
yoke, as well as His Cross, upon us, does not refer 
specifically to disease, but to the burden of bearing 
and carrying His message of love and healing of 
body, mind and soul to all the world. Spurgeon 
well says, in a sermon on the Wise Men: “He has 
not come to put away our sins, and yet to leave us 
ungodly and self-willed.”’? God in Christ becomes 
allied to our nature to take away the sin and suffer- 
ing of mankind. He who strengthens the feeble 
knees and stands men upright by the power of His 


26 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


personality, by His very mercy persuades and 
pleads with men to show forth their gratitude in 
works of repentance and of charity. 

By word and precept Christ builds a loftier con- 
ception of God upon the Hebrews’ idea of Jehovah. 
The teaching of the Book of Job, for example, is not 
complete in our Savior’s revelation of God. Many 
of Christ’s teachings were contrary to the Temple 
doctors. We are to love our enemies, bless those 
that despitefully use us in order to prove our divine 
sonship. Disease is not necessarily a visitation 
~ from God, as witness Jesus’ reply to His question- 
ers, John 9:3: “Neither hath this man sinned nor 
his parents.” That disasters are not sent upon the 
sinful only is taught by Christ in that instance of 
the eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell 
(Luke 13:4), in order to show that God is not 
punishing the evil or rewarding the innocent in 
this life. 


3. POWER AND AUTHORITY 


To the curing of the sick, the casting-out of 
devils (those mentally afflicted), to the forgiveness 
of sin, and thereby to the building of character, the 
Gospels give authority in the name of Jesus of 
Nazareth. Let us go carefully into this authority 
as it is presented by the four evangelists. {7 Mat- 
thew 10:1, 7, 8: “And when He had called unto 
Him His twelve disciples He gave them power 
over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal 


FAITH HEALING 27 


all manner of disease. Heal the sick, cleanse the 
lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye 
have received, freely give.’ Luke 9:1 and_6 are 
quite similar in their authority. Mark 6:12-13 _ 
says: ‘They went out and preached that men 
should repent, and they cast out many devils and 
anointed with oil many that were sick, and healed 
them.” St. John 20:21: “As my, Father hath 
sent me, ‘even so send I you. . . .; Whosesoever 
sins ye remit they are remitted es them.” The 
Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s Epistles and the Epistle 
of James testify, as we shall later take up, the in- 
controvertible commission and authority for the 
ministry of healing. Combined with this commis- 
sion are authorizations for two acts—healing and 
forgiving: The value of these two functions is — 
compared in the text where He says: ‘For whether 
it is easier to say, thy sins be forgiven thee; or to 
say, arise, take up thy bed and walk?” Thereupon 
Christ healed the young man. This healing fol- 
lows the act of repentance. Christ bestows these 
powers upon those whom He chooses to be His 
disciples. 

The healing of the sick and the curing of a soul 
are in this saying very intimately united. Dr. S. 
Weir Mitchell, the well-known neurologist, said 
of one of his patients: “His organs are all well, 
the man is sick.” Christ recognized this relation- 
ship between the soul of a man and bodily and men- 
tal phenomena. Physicians are trying more and 


28 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


more, as they put it, to give nature a chance. They 
bind up the wounds but they acknowledge that the 
vis medicatrix naturae (the healing power of na- 
ture) cures them. The disciples were commis- 
sioned to give the sick the benefit of three of the 
best medicines in God’s pharmacy—confidence, 
cheerfulness and hope. No better materia medica 
is composed in these respects than that created 
by Christ’s teaching. 

Jesus Christ gave this power to His followers 
that thereby they might be won to a better life and 
win others. He came to seek and to save the lost 
and bids His Church do the same by the methods 
which He employed. Thus we see the ministry of 
healing, for which we have abundant New Testa- 
ment authority, is a process for stirring the will 
and awakening the conscience to the reality and 
rule of God. He who can restore health can re- 
deem a soul and lead one on to self-control, to the 
higher faculties of Christian ethics, to the love 
and service of God and mankind. 


4. CURES OF CHRIST IN NEW TESTAMENT 


Jesus Christ did not emphasize but rather tried 
to conceal the fact that He was a healer. Exam- 
ine the pages of the Gospels and we find He has a 
deeper purpose than curing the body. He is es- 
tablishing a kingdom of love, health, peace and 
joy—the reign of God triumphant over sin. In 


FAITH HEALING 29 


Him the divine and eternal are manifest for moral 
and spiritual ends. The Gospel narratives portray 
the Great Physician as the Saviour of the soul as 
well as a worker of signs and wonders. The word 
used in the Greek Testament is “sozein”—to save. 
In other contexts it is used to signify heal, make 
whole, restore. Salvation, according to the New 
Testament, therefore means wholeness, complete- 
ness and soundness. To be in good health is to 
be in good spirits also; it means that a healthy per- 
son is loving, pure, helpful and, in so far as it is 
possible, approaching to Christlikeness. The man 
who took up his couch or pallet when Christ said 
“Thy faith hath saved thee” could not only walk, 
but began to walk, we may presuppose, in ways of 
pleasantness and paths of peace. 

| The identical power which cures the body also 
cures the soul in Christ’s miracles. His person- 
ality, His challenge to faith, function through the 
heart’s sincere desire, confidence and expectant vic- 
tory. In all cases and cures the life-giving energy 
which aids the physical sufferer, or aids the spir- 
itually penitent, to come to a realization of all his 
bodily and ethical faculties comes from the same 
source.) Cures of the body in the Gospels react 
upon character. In these Bible episodes there is 
harmony between what happened and the laws of 
nature as we know them. Christ does not break 
any laws of nature in His miracles of healing. “The 
fact is continually authenticated by those who were 


30 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


disinterested eye witnesses that “He healed many 
that were sick of divers diseases.” Jesus refers 
to these acts of mercy as signs and works. In 
other words they were signs pointing the way to 
spiritual entities, to a more abundant life. 

These miraculous cures were used quite often 
in Christ’s early ministry. Later, they were prac- 
ticed quite seldom. ‘Then He is pointing the way 
of those whom He had already attracted by means 
of these miracles to a nobler, more unselfish life 
in companionship with God. It is quite apparent 
that Jesus knew more about these hidden forces 
for the regaining of health and strength, and of the 
way in which He could translate these into moral 
victories. 

What did Christ do to work these cures? He 
uses spiritual and mental forces of which psychol- 
ogy and psychoanalysis is only sparingly aware. 
Those who wrote these accounts were not scien- 
tifically trained. In many cases they were not so 
much interested in wonder-cures as they were in 
some theological dispute—healing on the Sabbath. 
It was unlawful to heal on the Sabbath. 

In all these cures Jesus emphasizes the matter 
of subjective faith. Where there was little faith 
we read: ‘He could there do no mighty work be- 
cause of their unbelief.”’ On the other hand the 
Roman soldier says: “Speak the word only and 
my servant will be healed.” Jesus asks the blind 
if they believe He can cure them? They answer 


FAITH HEALING 31 


in the affirmative, and Christ touches their eyes and 
they receive their sight. Faith aroused by mercy, 
compassion and command restores the use of the 
withered hand. In the case of the woman with the 
issue of blood, Edward R. Micklem says in Mira- 
cles and the New Psychology, page 122: ‘‘Psy- 
chologists would say that He [Jesus] thus saved 
her from a morbid complex arising out of her il- 
legal art, and so very likely from another disease 
or the recurrence of her old one. Because faith 
is not mentioned in a few cures it does not deny 
the fact that it there existed. Dr. C. R. Brown 
in his chapter on The Healing Miracles of Christ 
says: “His ordinary method was to enlist the co- 
operation of expectant faith on the part of the suf- 
ferer with the redemptive action of his own strong, 
wise and sympathetic personality to the end that 
recovery might come.” 

While on earth Christ expressed the pity of God 
for suffering humanity and proclaims His deity 
thereby. All but one of these cures appear to be 
immediate, although it is possible many of them 
took place between the time of Christ’s resurrec- 
tion and the date of the writing of the Gospels. 
The one exception where the cure is progressive is 
that recorded in Mark 8:22-25. In the Acts of 
the Apostles the cures were performed to attest 
the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, chaps. 
3:12-18; 4:10, 33; 5:29-32. In these days faith 
has to battle for its own existence ofttimes by 


32 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


wearisome and gradual restoration, but those who 
were with Jesus on earth, or succeeded Him, 
wrought instant faith-cures. St. Paul endeavors 
to explain the beneficence of faith in Ephesians 
2:1-10, and particularly in verse eight where he 
says: “By grace are ye saved through faith; and 
that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” 

The key to faith’s medicine-chest is love. Where 
perfect love enters there is no door which cannot 
be unlocked. This is why Christian faith is defined 
as a faculty of the affection. Intellectual faith is 
little more than the knowing how to solve a prob- 
lem. Only those in the Gospels who were bound 
to our Lord in the intimacy of love and trust ex- 
perienced the dynamics of faith. To His disciples 
He appeals in John 14:15: Tf: ye love me keep my 
commandments.” Only when they confessed and 
professed that love could they carry on His acts of 
mercy by a faith which worketh by love. These 
patients and penitents first surrendered to the will 
of the Lord with an overflowing love and desire 
of expectant victory which gains.for them sound- 
ness of body and newness of life. | 

Forms of faith which appear extremely super- 
stitious in these days-of-scientific usage were pri- 
vately employed by Christ. In one instance, for 
example, we read that the Saviour took a deaf and 
dumb man aside from the crowd, put His fingers 
into his ears and spat and touched his tongue. In 
another place Christ spits on the patient’s eyes, 


FAITH HEALING 83 


lays His hands on him, and sight returns. Still 
again Christ spits on the dust, makes clay of the 
saliva and with it anoints the eyes of the blind, 
telling him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam. 
“He went his way therefore and washed and came 
seeing.” The use of saliva was as unsanitary, as 
it was a popular remedy, among the people of Pal- 
estine and other ignorant races of that day. 

Again we observe many of Christ’s cures were of 
neurotic cases. Hysteria—fixed ideas—cause mala- 
dies. Demoniacs were supposed by the supersti- 
tious people to be mastered by some internal evil 
spirit. “He has a devil” they exclaimed. 

These cases may be summarized in three cate- 
gories: First, there was what we term the insane 
—the mentally unbalanced, like the man who made 
a freak of himself calling out during the religious 
service in the Temple: “What have we to do with 
Thee, Jesus of Nazareth! Let us alone.” Then 
there is the man of Gadara, outside Capernaum, 
who cut himself and was “exceeding fierce,” going 
about nude making incoherent remarks. After 
coming in contact with Jesus, “he was clothed and 
in his right mind.” 

A second category would include the boy near 
Mount Tabor who was afflicted with epilepsy. 
Sometimes he would fall into the fire or into the 
water. Epilepsy is a nervous disorder, all the 
symptoms of which were manifested by this lad. 

A A third category | includes tl those cases of avin 


SSRN UO eee 
Aneta cesar 





34 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


sis—a man with a dumb spirit; he was a mute. 
Another was a woman too broken in spirit to get 
out of bed for eighteen years. Dr. Du Bois, author 
of Psychic Treatment of Nervous Diseases, says: 
“The conditions of paralysis form part of the symp- 
tomatology of hysteria. Everybody knows that 
these paralyses, as localized in a functional mus- 
cular group and appearing in the wake of a known 
or unknown auto-suggestion, may disappear as if 
they were caused by suggestive influence.” Jesus 
treated these sufferers in a way which they with 
their limited knowledge would understand—by the 
vitalizing of His own attractive personality. So 
likewise does the success of many modern practi- 
tioners depend upon the confidence they inspire. 
Jesus rebukes, exorcises the unclean spirits to come 
out and flee. 

Still another baffling problem has been the cure 
of lepers until it was discovered that this is) 
disease was largely due to a neurosis and increased 
by a depressed mentality. J. F. Schamberg, M.D., 
says: ‘There are two forms of modern eproae 
the tubercular or modular, and the anesthetic or 
nervous; generally both forms are present.” The , 


: 
| 


\ 


ten ies were healed as they went along the road- \ 


side to show themselves to the priests. Many 


he treatment, notably “shingles.” 


\\ 


\\ 


forms of skin diseases are curable through mental | 


{ 
a 
\ 


\ 


The Gospel narratives show that Jesus appreci+~ 


ated the origin of some diseases in the perverted 


FAITH HEALING 35 


moral nature. The palsied man let down through 
the roof had obviously been an evil-doer, for at once 
Christ says: ‘Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” A 
man must be morally straight before faith-cures 
can take effect. Likewise Jesus says to the man 
at the pool of Bethesda: “Sin no more, lest a 
worse thing come upon thee.” 

The plan of Christ was to make the people who 
believed in Him completely well in mind and body, 
but especially in their soul, that there might be 
in them no root of bitterness, no lurking place for 
Secret sin, no spite, malice, hatred or uncharitable- 
ness. To receive His benefits the patients must 
stand in proper relations with Him and their fellow 
men. When He could say to them “Great is thy 
faith” then He could also proclaim: “Be it unto 
thee even as thou wilt.” Unlike those who exalt 
the founder of their cult (Mrs. BIG. e Eddy), 
to be ‘coequal with Christ, and take for their-own 
services all the pay they can get, the earthly re- 
wards of Jesus are conspicuously absent from the 
New Testament records. Christ never coveted 
‘notoriety, fame or fees. “See that thou tell no 
man.” But He did long and yearn for the hearts 
of the people. He wanted them to love Him as 
He loved them and was willing to die to obtain their 
love. He had more eternal consequences at stake 
than any outward show, praise or compensation. 
He desired to be their guide through life, and even 
unto death. He wished to give to mankind a 


36 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


knowledge and a faith in Himself, who could con- 
quer death and sin, that would assuage the grief 
and suffering, not only in that day, but in all the 


ages that should follow. 


Cures of Jesus Christ may be tabulated in the 
order of their appearance in the Gospels, thus: 





Patient Place 


PRL Veet hs octal e Jerusalem 
Wife hie sos Bethsaida 
Unclean ....... Capernaum 
Devils... ise ee Capernaum 
Leprosy .:.... Galilee 
PRISV iain eceiaie Galilee 
TRATION Bethesda .. 
PLAN ein Uy Capernaum 


JOarus cae. bs Capernaum 
Tastio yi yes Gennesaret. 
PRU S ee be Bethsaida 
Blind: sk co Jericho 
Pub wee Capernaum 
Cragys oii tn. Tabor’... 
Woman ...... Jerusalem . 
DTOpsy sso a Jerusalem . 


Matt. 


—__oOOOO | Ud | 


Mark 


6:55 


4:40 


be" 
11:1 


9:1 


6:2 


II 
METHODS OF CHRISTIAN HEALING 


I. IN THE ACTS 


N the Acts of the Apostles there are twenty 
references to miracles of healing with state- 
ments concerning the persons who were healed, 

the methods used and through whom the cures 
were effected: Acts 2:43: Many wonders and 
signs were done by the Apostles; 3:2: The lame 
man; 5:12: Signs and wonders wrought among 
the people; 5:15: The shadow of Peter; 6:8: 
Stephen; 8:7: The palsied and lame; 8:13: Philip; 
9:17: Ananias and Paul; 9:3: Aeneas; 9:37: 
Dorcas; 14:34: Paul and Barnabas; 14:8: At 
Lystra; 14:19: Paul; 15:12: Gentiles; 16:18: Ex- 
orcism; 19:11: Handkerchiefs and aprons; 20:9: 
Eutychus; 28:3: Fever; 28:8: Publius; 28:9: 
Paul on the island. 

This list_reveals that_others than_the Apostles 
performed miraculous cures—namely, the deacons 
Stephen and Philip and Ananias, a disciple. Faith 
is mentioned or implied_as_ prerequisite for healing. 
For example, Peter says: “By faith in His name 
hath His name made this man strong, whom ye be- 
hold in the faith which is through Him hath given 

37 


38 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


Him this perfect soundness in the presence of you 
all.” Healings of the Acts occurred in the name 
and by belief in Jesus Christ. ‘I charge thee, in 
the name of Jesus Christ”—Acts 4:29-30. 
| There is no record of anointing in the Acts, but 
the ‘laying-on-of-hands” is spoken of in chaps. 
9:17 and 28:8. By command, by faith, by use 
of a loud voice, by “fastening his eyes upon him,” 
by touch and suggestion were these afflicted healed. | 
utychus was restored by prayer and embrac- 
ing. Peter’s passing by those on beds and couches 
stirred up the faith of the sick by an enthusiastic 
community of interest. These methods were em- 
ployed for the purpose revealed in the text, “be- 
lievers were thus more added to the Lord.” (The 
use_of tokens, pieces_of garments, handkerchiefs, 
may_be_classified as a symbol of esteem and love 
in the Christian fellowship for those holy men. 
This_ love for the saints ‘of God revived faith,and 
through that faith God healed them. This method 
intensified the respect and love among the early 
believers for those who went forth to teach and to 
heal in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 











2. ANOINTING 


The New Testament contains only two references 
to Unction, Mark 6:7; and James 5:13-15. We 
note that in James this is for the purpose of eradi- 
cating sin to heal the body. The Douay or Roman 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 39 


Catholic translation is slightly incorrect in using 
the Latin Vulgate word “‘alleviabit” for the Greek 
word “egerei’”’ in place of the actual word in the 
earliest manuscripts “egeirein,” which means to 
raise up. The copyists in misreading or inserting 
a word of quite similar spelling have caused the 
Roman Church to draw out a misinterpretation 
in the translation: ‘The Lord shall comfort the 
soul of the sick man.” Hence Unction among 
them is used more for comfort and consolation 
and preparation for death than forgiveness of sins. 
The best treatise on this erroneous development is 
displayed in F. W. Puller’s Anointing of the Sick 
in Scripture and Tradition. Father Puller says 
that during the first seven centuries anointing of 
the sick with holy oil continued without intermis- 
sion. During these centuries anointing was solely 
for the removal of disease, not for the remission of 
sin. No record is extant of persons being anointed 
as a preparation for death. In the year 800 A.D. 
Bishop Theodulph of Orleans issued an instruction 
ordering Unction to be used in articulo mortis. 
When Peter Lombard, in 1151, limited the official 
sacraments of the Church to seven he included 
Unction among them. The Council of Trent, 
1551, established Unction as a sacrament to pre- 
pare the sick for death. To this day the Roman- 
ists adhere to the decrees of the Council of Trent 
in this respect, as in others. With them, there- 
fore, Unction ceased to be a means of healing, but 


40 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


is to the present time a consolation for the dying. 

Etymologically the word “presbyter” in James 
is contracted to our modern word priest, which 
signifies elder. The proper person to send for 
when one is sick, we see in the text above cited, is 
the officer of the Church. Others are possessors 
of the gift of healing as we may read in I Corinthi- 
ans 12:9. No exclusion of them, because of office 
or lack of office is implied by James. Others than 
the priests or presbyters might bless and use the 
holy oil. In the Greek Orthodox Church the 
priest separately blesses oil for each sick person. 
Among the Roman Catholics the Bishop alone 
blesses the oil. In the Anglican Church the rubric 
directs: “The priest (or the Bishop if he be pres- 
ent) shall let them depart with his blessing.” 

From the foregoing we may conclude that bodily 
healing was, and is conveyed by the application of. 
oil blessed with prayer and faith. Local customs 
differ, but the command to anoint the sick still 
prevails. 


3. LITURGIES 


The formal prayers of the primitive Church 
demonstrate the belief of the early Christians in 
the efficacy and perseverance of prayer for the sick. 
The Liturgies prescribe the laying-on-of-hands. 
In the earliest mention outside the New Testament 
made in the year 180 A.D., Irenzus, Bishop of 
Lyons, says: “Others again heal the sick by laying 


CHRISTIAN HEALING Ay 


their hands upon them and they are made whole 
without taking reward from them.” ‘Tertullian, in 
the year 211 A.D. speaks of formal prayer with 
Unction having been used successfully for the 
Roman Emperor, Septimius Severus. The earliest 
liturgical quotation, 350 A.D., containing prayers 
for Christian Healing is that of the Sacramentary of 
Serapion. The formal prayer therein prescribed 
for blessing the oil is: ‘We bless through the name 
of Thy only begotten, Jesus Christ, these creatures. 
We name the name of Him who suffered, who was 
crucified, and rose again, and who sitteth on the 
right hand of the uncreated, upon this oil. Grant 
healing power upon these creatures, that every 
fever and every devil and sickness may depart 
through the anointing in the name of Jesus Christ 
through whom to Thee are the glory and the 
strength in the Holy Spirit to all the ages of the 
ages. Amen.” ‘Thus Unction was used under set 
forms of prayer in the fourth century. The Pray- 
ers of St. Jerome (390) also contain a Service of 
Unction. Hilarion in a biography of Jerome tes- 
tified that this bishop blessed oil and it was found 
to be a cure for wounds. Other liturgies, namely 
the Apostolic Constitutions (about 375 A.D.) and 
the Testamentum Domini (400) and in Bede’s 
Life of St. Cuthbert, 687 A.D., we find forms for. 
anointing. Many of the post-Nicene Fathers used 
anointing, and their formal liturgy is mentioned in © 
Westcott. Among these are Chrysostom, Par- 


42 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


thenius, Macarius, Sozomenus, Clement of Rome 
and numerous others. 

Today, Unction is practiced by the Anglican, 
Greek and Roman Churches but neglected by most 
Protestant bodies. The first Prayer Book of the 
Anglican Church contains this rubric: “If the sick 
person desires to be anointed, then shall the priest 
anoint him upon the forehead or breast only, mak- 
ing the sign of the cross.” 

The Second Prayer Book prepared in the reign 
of Edward VI, omitted Unction entirely. This 
was under an extreme Protestant régime. The 
Nonjurors (1781) drew up a service which they 
titled Extreme Unction which they claimed was 
commanded by the Apostle James. 

The present English and American Books of 
Common Prayer do not contain a Service of Unc- 
tion. In the Protestant Episcopal Church there is 
now a commission to investigate the subject and 
to draft a Service; and that Service for the past 
three years has had permissive use. The conse- 
cration of a bishop provides that he heal the sick 
after the pattern of our Lord’s charge to the disci- 
ples as recorded in the eighth verse of the tenth 
chapter of Matthew. 

When the Lord’s Supper is administered to the 
people in the Protestant Episcopal Church the fol- 
lowing words are said to each individual: ‘The 
Body of our Lord Jesus Christ, which was given 
for thee, preserve thy body and soul unto everlast- 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 43 


ing life. The Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ 
which was shed for thee, preserve thy body and 
soul unto everlasting life.’ Thus the office of 
Holy Communion in the Anglican Church, today, 
has a more pertinent reference to the health and 
preservation of the body than its prayers for the 
Visitation of the Sick or any other prayers in the 
liturgical services. However, Unction is practiced 
by approximately one-third of the clergy of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, and in no diocese in 
America is its use forbidden. 


cate Bie 


af St. James says, “The prayer of faith shall save 
the sick,” and Jesus Christ says: ‘All things what- 
soever ye ask in prayer, believing ye shall receive.” 
Matt. 21:22. | The condition we must satisfy then 
to obtain healing is that of faith. A prerequisite 
of faith in God is a knowledge of His unchangeable 
love and good will toward us. In II Timothy 
2:13 this idea is stated in the following words: 
“Tf we believe not, yet he abideth faithful; he can- 
not deny himself.” 

Christ does not violently force Himself upon 
us to any. greater extent than He did upon the peo- 
ple in the villages and towns of Galilee. People 
remained sick there because they did not ask Him 
to be made well; they did not believe in Him; 
they did not-seek His touch. They “had not be- 


Ady HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


cause they asked not,” to use the words of St. 
James. Some faithful friends did seek and gain 
relief for their diseased kindred. 

Faith requires effort, a battle against fear, preju- 
dice and doubt. Faith involves more than belief; 
it is more than mere intellectual acceptance of a 
proposition. Devils believe and tremble, but that 
does not drive them away nor cure them. Some 
describe faith as a constant wish, whereas it is a 
‘continual act of will. Faith is the accumulation of 
the substances of things hoped for, the being will- 
ing to gather evidence and the collection of testi- 
mony creating a hope for things unseen. Hartley 
Coleridge well defines faith in the lines when he 
writes: 


It is an affirmation and an act 
That bids eternal truth be present fact. 


soem 


SS ne SS RE ST 


be andor and harder to ‘stop. _ We expect by 
faith what must be possible, for what would be the 
will of God for us. Therefore as we experience 
benefits of faith in the healing of the body it tends 
to promote our spiritual progress and the elimina 
tion of sin. Our Lord’s miracles were performed 
where doubt was utterly banished from heart and. { 
mind, where reverence and faith in His sacred per- \ 
son were paramount. None were cured who were | 


f f f 
& 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 45 


not resolved to live in accordance with His divine 
will. Expectancy can be willed and won through 
prevailing prayer. We shall expect that He who 
can say: “Thy sins be forgiven thee” can also 
say: ‘Arise, and walk.” 

Faith to be healed calls forth the spirit of ad- 
venture. We are required to act out our ex- 
pectancy, to achieve by venture. This spirit of 
adventure is illustrated in the woman who said: 
“Tf I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole.” 
And she took the venture. Her touch was the only 
one Jesus mentions. ‘Thy faith hath made thee 
whole.” Adventurous faith is but the law of cause 
followed by effect of healing. “According to your 
faith be it unto you.” Our Lord wills us to be well 
in body as He does in soul. | Faith is related to 
every phase of life and character. The effect of 
faith upon the body and the health is to stimulate 
the will and the spirit of adventure and to create 
expectancy and hope in the realm of the soul’s sin- 
cere desire to resist evil and all effects of sin. ' 

Furthermore, faith stimulates_imagination. It_ 
holds_up. before us the Image of what we should 
become and can become. The Lord’s Prayer “Thy 
will be done” is a . daily reminder of the possibility 
of achieving the purposes of God. The vision of 
what ought to be is transcendently visualized as 
what can and will be through energizing faith. 
Morbid deification of pain vanishes where that 
prayer | springs from faith in the curing Christ. 


46 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


The Nancy School of Suggestive Therapeutics has 
developed the curative factors of imagination to a 
high degree, but no higher than the faith of any sin- 
cere believer in Jesus Christ, and the promises of 
Christ. He came into the world not to tease us 
or ridicule us, but to give us, with the aid of imag- 
inative faith, life more abundant as He proclaims 
in the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to 
John. We are created to possess the truth as it is 
in Him, He tells us, and that truth we see by the 
most meager use of the imagination shall make us 
free; free from the control of sin and the sins of 
the flesh and the ills to which flesh is heir. 

Imagination, stirred up by faith, sees no limit to 
the possibilities of the healing, forgiving Powel of 
Christ. “Whatsoever ye ask in My name” conveys 
imagery without limit. “I will, be thou clean” 
creates in the imagination a sense of the possibility 
and source of a pure life, a life hid in Christ with 
God, cleansed from all sin. 

In the fifth verse of the fourth chapter of his 
first Epistle, John writes: EThis is the victory 
that overcometh the world, even our faith.” Here 
we confront the conquering power of faith upon 
the mind which reflects its power upon the whole 
character and body of him who possesses it. 
“There’s nothing either good or bad, but_thinking. 
makes it Soi says a poet.| The Crusaders were 
inspired ‘to overcome thei hardships and enemies 
by the faith they possessed in the Cross of Christ. 


CHRISTIAN HEALING AT 


In hoc signo vinces thrilled them to see beyond the 
falseness and fleetingness of the affairs of the world. 
They, trusting in Jesus Christ, were more than con- 
querors by the might of His victory. Their faith 
brought into their soldiering the grandest, most 
solemn and spiritual realities. Likewise, the indi- 
vidual of the present day masters his body and its 
unseen enemies by a revitalized strength in the 
inner man or soul. 

Faith is the _anzesthesia__ of the soul—the thing 
which de deadens it to the pains which come from the 
world. If a man does not believe the world’s pains 
are of much consequence, then they are not so. 
He who sees by faith through the encompassing 
smoke of the fires which would cause his martyr- 
dom, or hears through the din of this world’s un- 
rest the calm voice of His Savior, will dare not 
deny Christ’s power to care for him. ‘Be of good 
cheer, I have overcome the world.” All _the tor- 
ments of the nerves or of germs cannot defeat the 
soul. which has faith in a healing Savior. A flicker 
of the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, 
in the presence of Jesus Christ will dispel all dark- 
ness and shadows, and sighing will flee away be- 
fore the faith which shall overcome the world. Cul- 
tivating the habit of thinking of Jesus Christ as 
present in the midst of all the world’s distress gives 
poise to the Christian consciousness, stability, 
trust, hope and other qualities of mind which 
quicken every vital factor in the one who possesses 


48 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


faith and who, as a Christian, understands and 
grasps the same. 

Faith operates by aiding us to “get out of our- 
selves.” Faith implies the acceptance of a chance, 
and not the denial of its existence. In the case of 
poison, for example, an antidote used in faith will 
serve to bring the afflicted one’s powers of resist- 
ance into action against the bad effects. Our self- 
limitation has much to do with our bodily ‘suffering. 
Faith works by drawing us out of ourselves by set- 
_ting free our forces of body and mind which become 
a healing power. Escape from self gives us a fuller 
freedom to permit the healing power of nature to 
have free course. ‘The most effective faith is that 
by means of which we acquire the broadest free- 
dom. It is in this setting at liberty new forces of 
a therapeutic character, and in the opening of new 
‘pathways that we test the distinguishing efficacy 

o _of faith. This explains many so-called cures which 
7 are accomplished with equal results by faith in 
different means of application, some of them scien- 
tifically and medicinally obviously devoid of any 
curative potency. ‘This includes many physiolog- 
ical disorders both functional and organic as well 





|| There are many cures with definite external hates 
| in which the deciding factor is the patient’s own 
| inner force (élan vital) and when this is vigorously 
| called forth by faith in some person, e.g., to the 
Ras Jesus Christ, or some treatment, He or 





CHRISTIAN HEALING | 49 


_it_proves sufficient for the requirement, irrespec- 
tive of the value of the the medicaments. 

As we progress in our ur study we shall see, in Chap- 
ter III, the effect of Christian Healing upon the 
life of sin. But we may say in passing that when 
such a moral philosopher as St. Paul classifies faith 
(I Corinthians 13:13), as one of the three cardinal 
virtues, we are dealing with a quality of mind of 
superlative value in the conquest of evil. It is 
peculiarly the function of the Church to promote 
all reasonable measures for the growth of faith in 
its twofold endeavor to help body and soul. There 
are extremes on either side. Faith healers stress 
bodily healing in their several “cults at the expense 
of the spiritual life. On the other hand, the 
Church, in modern days, is “quite universally miss- 
ing its opportunities in neglecting the nervous and 
‘physical prophylaxis of its members. The proper 
function of the Church is to embrace a happy mean 
inclusive of both spiritual and bodily welfare and 
health of those whom it serves. 

Faith is a cumulative asset which remedies the 
moral faculties and “strengthens them. Hence 
those who have been physically benefited by faith 
are, in consequence, enabled to employ faith in 
the sphere of motivation and behavior. Therefore _ 
the Church which provides.a_ministry of healing 
“and ‘effects cures by means of Christian faith is 
thereby taking a step forward in intensifying faith 


that shall be effective in producing Christian con- 


50 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


duct, and eliminates in that measure the dominance 
of sin corresponding to the benefits which have been 
received upon the mind and body. 


5. LAYING-ON-OF-HANDS 


As an act of blessing, consecration and ordina- 
tion not a few religious bodies at one time and 
another, and with diverse intentions, have practiced 
the laying-on-of-hands. This simply means the 
placing of the hands of him who would bestow a 
blessing upon the head of him who is to receive 
the same. We see the same custom or ritual in the 
story of the Old Testament patriarchs in the nar- 
ratives of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

Jesus Christ employed this method of touch 
combined with command and prayer and fasting. 
“Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity,” 
then He laid His hands upon her. Wecan scarcely 
differentiate the touch of Christ from the laying- 
on-of-hands. The process is the same. However, 
touch may not be as formal, ceremonious and 
liturgical as that which is implied by the laying- 
on-of-hands. Christ touched the ear of Malchus 
and it was healed after Peter’s sword-thrust (St. 
Luke 22:49). Christ takes Peter’s wife’s mother 
by the hand and raises her up. He touched the 
leper (Matt. 8:2; Mark 1:40; Luke 5:12), at 
Gennesaret. ‘Thus in a few cases ceremonial was 
employed by the act of touch. 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 51 


I would define the laying-on-of-hands as a re- 
ligious and prayerful ceremonial with formal touch 
or placing of the hands upon one who seeks a bene- 
fit through faith. Christ took the deaf and dumb 
man (Mark 7:32) away from the crowd, “put his 
fingers into his ears, and he spat, and touched his 
tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and 
saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.’ 
The blind man at Bethsaida He took out of the 
hamlet, moistened his eyelids with spittle, laid His 
hands on him and asked (Mark 8:32) “Seest thou 
aught?” This cure was gradual and progressive. 
St. John 9:1 records a more elaborate ceremonial 
in the case of a man born blind. Many who had 
plagues pressed forward in the crowds (Matt. 
12:15) that they might touch Christ and be healed, 
and in varying formal ways, through prayer, exor- 
cism and command His touch healed them as a re- 
sponse to their faith. 

The laying-on-of-hands brought to St. Paul his 
sight (Acts 22:13), and in Acts 28:8, we find Paul 
healing Publius by the same method. In a few 
instances we find an expression or prayer similar 
to “Jesus Christ healeth thee” as in Acts 9:34; 
where Peter cures the palsied Aeneas combined 
with the laying-on-of-hands. 

That this ceremony was perpetuated after New 
Testament times we may learn from Irenzeus who, 
in the year 180 A.D., writes: “Others heal the 
sick by laying their hands upon them, and they 


52 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


are made whole. Yea, moreover, as I have said, 
the dead even have been raised up, and remained 
among us for many years.” (Ireneus’ Heresies, 
Book II, Chapter 32). Origen, who lived 185-253, 
testifies in his treatise on Celsus, Book I, Chapter 
46, that the laying-on-of-hands wrought cures 
“some of them more remarkable than any that ex- 
isted among the Jews, and these we ourselves have 
witnessed.” 


6. RELICS 
Ce eee 


One encounters more fiction than fact in the 
records of cures by means of relics. Little can we 
encourage belief in cases which are not scientifically 
diagnosed, reported or substantiated. If we can 
establish the fact that cures have taken place from | 
touching relics and blessed objects we might save 
many pious writers of ecclesiastical history before 
the Reformation from an ignominious libel. The 
first authenticated cures from relics are mentioned 
by Ambrose (340-397), Bishop of Milan. He was 
a prominent and respected citizen, lawyer and mag- 
istrate, and one of the four Doctors in the Latin 
Church. In one of his letters (22) he testifies that 
a butcher, Severus, in Milan, was cured from blind- 
ness by touching the shroud covering the bodies of 
two martyrs, Gervasius and Protasius. Those who 
had been giving this blind butcher charity after he 
could no longer work were present and witnessed 
to the certainty of the cure. St. Chrysostom (347- 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 53 


407) in his sermons disparages the days in which 
he lives, because so few healing miracles happen; 
but this implies that a few do occur, and he further- 
more verifies the fact that spiritual healing results 
from his preaching. 

At Lourdes for the past three-fourths of a cen- 
tury we note from the investigation of Dr. Percy 
Dearmer in Body and Soul that healing miracles 
have been examined and verified by disinterested 
physicians of repute both within and without of the 
Church. About one hundred and fifty thousand 
pilgrims visit this shrinesevery year. The annual 
certified cures average two hundred and twenty. A 
charitable opinion may presuppose that some are 
not cured at once. The vast majority will not sub- 
mit to medical examination before, or after their 
visit. Symptoms of almost every sort are allevi- 
ated, but we observe nervous diseases are in a 
minority, whereas pulmonary tuberculosis has the 
highest. number of curés (217) of any one specific 
malady. Among the bureau of investigators of 
these cures in Dr. Bertrin’s report there are three 
members of the Academy of Medicine of Paris, 
fourteen medical professors of foreign faculties, one 
hundred and twenty-four house-surgeons of hos- 
pitals and forty other eminent physicians. Some 
days there are as many as sixty, and usually fifty, 
physicians present who make thorough examina- 
tions. A Protestant doctor from England writes: 
“As regards the medical examination of the cures, 


54 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


I am happy to express my complete satisfaction 
with the manner in which medical certificates are 
dealt with. Nothing can exceed the conscientious 
care with which the value of each certificate is dis- 
cussed. The sick person remains some days after 
at Lourdes. He has to appear every morning and 
evening before the committee in order to prove 
that the cure is permanent.” 

It may rightfully be questioned what has all 
this to do with the function of the Church in bring- 
ing salvation any more than the cures accomplished 
by Christian Scientists have to do with morals and 
the defeat of sin. These certificates have to do 
with bodily cures, and are not testimonials of char- 
acter. In Chapter IV we shall discuss the topic of 
health as an aid to character. 

In all fairness we may listen to critics of Lourdes. 
Mr. F. W. Myers, psychologist, and his brother, 
A. T. Myers, a physician, acknowledge that cures 
were made but in the cases they examined they say 
there was nothing miraculous about it, for this-was 
purely_a result of auto-suggestion intensified by 
religious enthusiasm. Dr. Dearmer went to 
Lourdes to gather some statistics from the authori- 
ties there and such were not obtainable. In his 
book entitled Body and Soul in a footnote on page 
328 he states: ‘What the proportion [of cures] 
really is I have been unable to ascertain even after 
personal inquiry at Lourdes. If we more than 
double the highest recorded number of cures, and 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 55 


estimate them at five hundred, counting improve- 
ments as cures, and if we assume that only a small 
proportion—one in five—of the pilgrims are pa- 
tients, me still only get just over one per cent. of 
cures.’ 

If, at the most celebrated place in the world for 
cures by relics, we are informed that ninety-nine 
per cent. of all cases are failures, and we know that 
at St. Anne’s, outside Montreal, and other noted 
shrines, cures are less plentiful, we may conclude 
we are investigating a source of little value to medi- 
cine or morals. Here and there is reported chi- 
canery in miraculous cures of relics, images and 
other sacred objects. For example, a woman who 
could not stop the flow of her tears in her great 
sorrow went to a foreign church in Philadelphia, 
and, praying before the statue of the Virgin, saw 
tears flow from the marble eyes of the figure. The 
Virgin’s sympathy dried the suppliant’s tears. 
Later a report was authenticated that an attendant 
in the church pressed a bulb behind the statue and 
caused drops to exude through a concealed pipe to 
the eyes. I would judge that relics therefore cause 
those who have them to claim more for their cura- 
tive properties than is in them. Yet we see that _ 
even deception, when wholeheartedly accepted. and. 





_ believed, is an element in faith healing even though 


Pre ne: 


ee SS RUE rE Se 


‘it promote the sin of falsehgod, 


a seer race 


56 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


7. HEALING IN THE HISTORIC CHURCH 

The testimony of ecclesiastical history makes it Ky 
quite futile for the uneducated to say that miracles | | 
of healing do not happen nowadays, or that miracles | 
ceased in the apostolic age. The words of our 
Savior refute such a statement. When we turn) | 
to the twelfth verse of the fourteenth chapter of | 
John’s Gospel we read: “He that believeth on\ 
me, the works that I do shall he do also; indy | 
greater works than these shall he do, because I go) | 
unto the Father.” History in the Acts of the Apos- | 
tles, or in later records, never states that the | 
power to heal and forgive has been withdrawn by 
our Savior from His true believers. When we” 
find there is no termination of miracles of healing 
“then we may y fairly . raise e the question why or when 
should there occur such termination so long as men > 
believe i in _Christ and the ministry of God’s holy 
spirit as conveyed through the Church. 

Witnesses whose integrity is above question or 
suspicion state and prove conclusively that the 
miracles of healing of the apostolic age continued 
to happen as late as the Council of Nicza in the 
year 325 A.D. Such is the conclusion of Dr. Ger- 
hard Uhlhorn in his Conflict of Christianity with 
Heathenism. Since miracles took place after the 
death of those who had lived with Jesus there is 
no reason for doubting their possibility in the years 
after the second century. 


/ 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 57v 


There are many references to spiritual or Chris- 
tian Healing among the early fathers. It will bea 
- source of strength to the faith in later day mira- 
cles if we collect only a few of these. In the 
twelfth Epistle of Clement we read: “Let them 
therefore, with fasting and prayer, make their in- 
tercessions, and not with the well arranged and fitly 
ordered words of learning, but as men who have 
received the gift of healing confidently, to the 
glory of God.” 

In his treatise against Celsus, Chapter 24, I find 
in Origen such a statement as this: “Some give 
evidence of their having received through their 
faith a marvelous power by the cures which they 
perform, invoking no other name over those who 
need their help than that of the God of all things 
and of Jesus, along with a mention of His history.” 

Irenzeus says: “The disciples receiving grace 
from Him do in His name perform miracles so as 
to promote the welfare of others according to the 
gift which each has received from Him. Others 
still heal the sick by laying their: hands upon them, 
and they are made whole.” So the age of mira- 
cles did not end with the apostles, we may be sure. 

The translator of Cyprian says: “There are 
successive evidences of miracles of healing down to 
the age of Constantine.” As late as 429 A.D. 
Theodore of Mopsuestua states: “Many heathen 
amongst us are being healed by Christians from 
whatever disease they have.” The time of Con- 


58 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


stantine’s conversion marks a distant epoch in 
Church history from an age of faith in Christ to 
trust in princes and worldly resources. Less de- 
pendence is placed upon Christ and more upon 
riches and political favor. Miracles were signs 
of the glorified Christ. When the Christians began 
to magnify Him by their architecture, pomp and 
worldly dominance, the age of miracles ceased. It 
is related of one of the popes that he declared that 
no longer need he say: ‘Silver and gold have I 
none,” to which a listener replied: “Neither can 
you say, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth 
rise and walk.’ ” 

Where we find a return and abundance of the 
primitive faith in any group of Christians there is 
evidence of the reoccurrence of the evangelical 
miracles. Note what is said by those Protestant 
heroes of Italy, the Waldensians: ‘‘As an article 
of faith, we hold and profess that persons may 
be anointed by one who joins in prayer that it 
may heal the body according to the design and 
effect mentioned by the apostles.” This religious 
body condemns Unction as a papal ordinance of 
death contrary to the practice of the vitalizing min- 
istry of Christian Healing. 

The Moravian Brethren catch the spirit of New 
Testament. healing as expressed by their pioneer 
and leader, Count Zinzendorf: “I owe this testi- 
mony to our Church that apostolic powers are 
there manifested. We have had undeniable proofs 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 59 


thereof in the unequivocal healing of maladies in 
themselves uncurable all by means of prayer or of 
a single word.” 

Our great and growing Presbyterian bodies have 
a heritage of healing unsurpassed in Church history 
as contained in the chronicles of the Scots Worthies 
‘and the lives of Kirk, Welch, Baillie, Craig and 
Knox. Miracles relating to both body and mind 
together with conversions and moral transforma- 
tions apparently incredible, are authenticated by 
disinterested witnesses of the prayers of Robert 
Bruce. The prayers of Patrick Simpson relieved 
a Scots Worthy’s wife of a demoniacal possession 
so violent that she raved and-tore her hair, for on 
the sixteenth day of; August, » 1607) she came into, 
and stayed in her rig lind through no other 
treatment than prayer. 

The-Baptists, as well as the Covenanters, retain 
records of their great evangelists exercising the 
ministry of healing. Vavasor Powell, styled “the 
“Morning Star of the Welsh Baptists,” relates his 
faith and practice in prayers for the sick and the 
laying-on-of-hands. Besides the many conversions 
and happy and reborn men created by his pulpit 
oratory it is said that he accepted the promise con- 
tained in the fifth chapter of James literally and 
“many persons recovered from dangerous sickness 
through prayer of faith which he offered.’ In 
Ivimy’s History of the Baptists we read the dec- 
laration of this preacher that “for the Elders to 


60 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


anoint the sick in the name of the Lord is.a gospel 
ordinance.”’ In the same history we read of two 
other equally eminent leaders among this denomi- 
nation, Henry Jessey and Hansard Knollys, offer- 
ing prayer and pronouncing over a blind member: 
“The Lord Jesus restore thy sight.” 

We find that the Church of England included 
in its first Prayer Book of 1549 a Service for 
Anointing. Whereas, in later years, it has taken 
on the sacramental idea of the last rights for the 
dying this Church has never contradicted the mes- 
sage of the sixteenth verse of the fifth chapter of 
the Epistle of James. We shall cover this point 
more fully in the subject af anointing. There are 
references to the wholesomeness and health of 
body, soul and spirit contained in the order for the 
Holy Communion, and particularly to the exhorta- 
tions to attend and partake of the same in a worthy 
manner. Until the days of Rev. H. B. Wilson in 
America and Mr. James Hickson in England there 
are no outstanding miracles of healing. Yet there 
are pertinent references to the idea that he that 
hath the Son hath life and those who partake of the 
Sacrament unworthily do so to their spiritual and 
bodily death, or as St. Paul terms it: ‘‘fall asleep.” 
In the early history of the Church in England there 
are not a few records of pilgrimages to shrines 
and holy relics of the saints and miraculous cures 
resulting thereby. Credence was given to these at 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 61 


the time, but the scientific mind of today would not 
accept the diagnosis of those afflicted. 

In the journals, letters and writings of early 
Methodists, such as those of Joseph Benson, we 
find instances of healing as the result of prayer. 
Rev. James McDonald testifies to the efficacy of 
prayer in the case of restoring strength to the im- 
potent limbs of a paralytic young mother. The 
London Methodist Magazine gives cases where the 
denomination it represents yields fruit in the heal- 
ing of individuals. Primitive piety has effected 
apostolic benedictions and faith-cures in the min- 
istry of the Wesleys, and Whitfield has manifested 
the power to heal in the Methodist Church. 

The long line of cures wrought by various re- 
ligious bodies is, in the work of the orthodox 
Churches, a means to an end. Healing has never 
been the primary consideration of the Church any 
more than it was to Peter when his shadow passing 
by restored the ill to health once more. 

The annals containing cures and the biographies 
of saints with their legends, traditions and cases of 
cures are, aS we said, of secondary consideration 
and very largely a by-product in the work of the 
Church, although healing is observed to be an ex- 
press command of the Savior. Because the func- 
tion of the Church is to combat sin and save souls 
therefrom, it has employed healing in many in- 
stances aS a means to this end. On the way to 
this goal and through the cure and salvation of the 


62 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


soul the under-mind has so dominated and led the 
cerebro-spinal and the vaso-motor systems as to 
restore normalcy to every tissue. Hence, the op- 
eration of the soul, as revived by the gift of heal- 
ing, has stimulated the sympathetic ganglia, put 
poise in cases of neuroses and psychoses and, in 
consequence, eliminated many of the bodily and 
lustful tendencies and temptations that would 
otherwise have been factors influencing the patient 
toward sin. The ministry of healing has thus 
strengthened the will to combat sin within the in- 
dividual. 

We may now survey the opinions and doctrines 
of a few of the more eminent theologians in re- 
spect to this subject of the Church’s function of the 
overcoming of sin through the agency of healing in 
the Church. The Roman Catholic Church vouches 
for the writings of Augustine in De Cevitate Det. 
There we read a caption concerning the miracles 
which were wrought in order that the world might 
believe in Christ “and which cease not to be 
wrought now that the world does believe. For 
even now miracles are wrought in His name.” 
Then follows a case of healing vouched for by sur- 
geons who discover healing had taken place upon 
a man whom they were to operate upon but found 
unnecessary after prayer. 

Martin Luther turned in disgust from flagrant 
lies about miracles of healing. He rebukes priests 
who claim cures from relics and other sacred ob- 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 63 


jects, which he knew by observation did not, and 
could not take place. Yet speaking as a pastor 
rather than the arch-controversialist that he was, 
Martin Luther says: ‘How often has it happened 
and still does, that devils have been driven out in 
the name of Christ, also by calling on His name 
and prayer that the sick have been healed?” In 
Seckendorf’s History of Lutheranism we are told 
of a complete recovery of an insane girl by prayers 
of a few of Luther’s clerical friends and the impo- 
sition of his own hands while he repeated the text: 
“He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall 
he do also, and greater works than these shall he 
do.” ‘There is the case of Luther’s prayer for 
Philip Melancthon who sent for the leader of the 
Saxon Reformation when this great scholar lay 
a-dying. Luther hurried to him and with his cus- 
tomary vehemence prayed that Christ would re- 
store Melancthon’s health if He ever wanted the 
petitioner to trust in the Savior again. Then he 
took Melancthon by the hand and said to him that 
he should have courage and not pass away. God 
had good reason to slay him for his sins, but he 
would be pardoned, converted and live. And so it 
was. Later Melancthon, in a letter to a friend, 
says: ‘I should have been a dead man had I not 
been recalled from death itself by the coming of 
Luther.” 

Referring to the same episode Luther writes: 
“T fetched back Philip out of hades. I found him 


64 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


dead, but by an evident miracle of God he lives.” 
Myconius relates he was kept from the grave by 
the power of Luther’s prayers—so Luthardt states 
in his Moral Truths of Christianity. 

Among well-recognized commentators on the 
Bible who believe in Christian Healing in the 
Church for the remedial value of the soul, we may 
list Richard Baxter, John Albert Bengel, Edward 
Irving, Bishop Westcott, Harnack, Simpson, Illing- 
worth, Batten, Allen, Gould, Plunber, Gore, Horace 
Bushnell; and none of any reputation disprove the 
efficacy of Christ’s power to heal or deny that He 
bequeathed this power to the Church. But that 
the Churches have neglected to use this power, 
they all agree. 


8. IDEALISM 


Among persons who are struggling for physical 
existence and the necessaries of life their thoughts 
and ambitions are centered upon food, health and 
shelter and how to procure them. When these are 
obtained there is opportunity for the bido or vital 
urge to concentrate about some other interests of 
a more idealistic concern. When a person has no 
health obviously his mind and ideals will be di- 
rected toward himself and those things which will 
aid him in building up a sound constitution. After 
this is obtained his interest is free to exert itself 
in creative and idealistic enterprises. 

Here the ministry of healing through the agency 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 65 


of the Church steps in to hold before the person 
restored to health ideals to stimulate the will to al- 
truistic occupations thereby combating sin within 
and without the patient. One of these ideals is 
the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The pa- 
tient is not left to the haphazard activities of his 
impulses. This ideal governs conduct because, as 
psychologists term it, this ideal is an adequate 
stimulus to one who believes in Christianity. His 
happiness and self-realization then depend not only 
upon health but upon achieving this higher ideal. 
How is it that the good man sometimes goes 
wrong although he be well in body? His mind has 
accepted the stimulus of an inadequate ideal. 
What we may term an adequate stimulus are those 
ideals or that form of idealism which can produce 
wholesomeness and happiness. Right and wrong 
action therefore depend upon the belief of the doer 
as such as will produce happiness to him. A 
Christian conscience awakened by Christian Heal- 
ing inculcates ideals of Christ. These take no de- 
light in the sufferings of others, nor in ideals em- 
bracing less than the whole man in the fulfillment 
of all his God-given powers and capacities. 
Having obtained health there is now more to 
do than simply let our organs function harmoni- 
ously. The quest for happiness is an ideal which 
will fill life so full that there will be no room for 
sin. One of the chief aims of the preacher is to 
start and restart the people of this pleasure-seeking 


66 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


age on this quest where true joy may be found. 
Happiness is not the aggregation or cumulative 
value of all pleasures as the hedonistic ethics teach. 
Rather is it the state of mind which senses the ex- 
pression of all the instincts operating in harmony. 
There is no conflict of ideals in true happiness. 
The Church upholds the ideal of a sound mind in 
a sound body cooperating in a sound soul or under- 
mind focussed on the Saviour of the world. 

Complete happiness cannot exist where health is 
lacking. For the ideal often will not transcend the 
desire for health. Having produced the foundation 
for happiness by establishing health there is a pro- 
gressive idealism toward goodness. ‘Those who 
strive to be good and complain continually of ill 
health or other matters neither enjoy health nor 
goodness. A psychological ideal cannot be accom- 
plished if ethical ideals are withdrawn. Our ma- 
ternal and paternal instincts, our selfish and our 
social instincts crave right relations with cthers. 
Such relationships imply and require happy asso- 
ciation between God and man. 

A Christian has other duties than that of keeping 
well. The ministry of healing liberates him to per- 
form these duties. As members of the Church we 
strive to do right regardless of the pleasures in- 
volved or lost. Not infrequently we do our duty 
from a sense of self-approbation or desire for 
thanks or reward for meritorious conduct. Many 
a French soldier in the line of duty has laid down 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 67 


his life for the chance of sporting a Croix de Guerre 
ora palm leaf. It is said of Christ: “For the joy 
that was set before Him He endured the cross”— 
the joy, no doubt, of performing His duty. Doing 
one’s duty, therefore, among Christians is a quali- 
fication for attaining the ideal of happiness. To 
receive health of God is thereby binding one by 
no less an obligation than to perform his duties on 
the highest plain of happiness to himself and others 
with the same broad vision of Jesus Christ to com- 
bat the sin of the world, the flesh and the devil. 


Q. PRESENT-DAY PRACTICES 


A A vast amount_of Christian | healing | is being at- 
by: over fifty nega | preachers and pastors. among 
a constituency of more than one-third of the popu- 
lation of the United States.” By this I mean pas- 
toral and sick calls, religious services, revivals, mis- 
sions and other offices of the Churches which are 
holding up Jesus Christ as the physician of the 
soul, the forgiver of sin and the emancipator of the 
effects from sin which flesh is heir to. Ask any 
one of these regularly constituted or ordained pas- 
__tors. if he believes i in the healing miracles of Christ 
and we find they are accepted as fact but preached 
as a source of inspiration for the conduct of the 
‘merbers:~ These-members. quite--consistently be- 
lieve in the efficacy of prayer. When they are 


68 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


a 


_seriously ill a large proportion are pleased to re- 
(/ ceive the pastor at their bedside, and he is fre- 
| quently sought that as James says (chap. V), “the 
] effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man avail- 
\ eth much.” All this is far removed from any defi- 
nite, organized function of Christian Healing. The 
/ ‘most popular, universal and specifically systema- 
| tized and incorporated organization for this prac- 
/ ' tice are the disciples of Mrs. Baker G. Eddy. 
AG More of her we shall learn later. 
The first accredited organization in the United 
States to specialize in Christian Healing began its 
work about 1880 under the leadership of Rev. A. B. 
Simpson, of Brooklyn. ‘This man, formerly a 
Presbyterian minister, founded the Christian and 
Missionary Alliance. His members called them- 
selves ‘Fourfolders.” They accepted Christ as 
Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and Coming King. I 
shall refer to them again under modern miracles. 
The main tenet of their beliefs, however, concerned 
itself with Christ’s speedy return to this world. 
Later, John Alexander Dowie originated the 
“Zion Movement.” Propaganda came forth like 
snowflakes in a storm in a publication he called 
Leaves of Healing. ‘This movement has since 
increased and is established in Illinois, radiocasting 
at W.C.B.D. 
Under the patronage of certain influential clergy- 
men of the Church of England, James Moore Hick- 
son began to hold missions for the revival of Chris- 





CHRISTIAN HEALING 69 


tian Healing about 1900. He continues to travel 
about the English-speaking world holding missions 
for Christian Healing. His efforts are largely cen- 
tered in his winning and spiritual personality and 
in a fair-sized magazine published by himself called 
The Healer. Those who subscribe to this are 
called members of the Healer Prayer Circle Union. 
Mr. Hickson is a layman of the Anglican commun- 
ion and his work is vouched for by the many clergy 
who lay hands on the sick together with him in the 
revivals which he is holding continually. I have 
attended three of his missions, spoken with him 
personally and have been impressed with the con- 
vincing sincerity and Christlike unselfishness of his 
merciful errand. Unlike some of those above-men- 
tioned, this healer will accept no fees or compensa- 
tion for his services, but says in grateful acknowl- 
edgment, ‘Thank the Father.” His assertions 
and affirmations about the possibility of bodily 
health are most astounding as we may read in his 
book, The Healing of Christ in His Church. He 
deals with all the cases in wholesale fashion in the 
Church gathering, placing the responsibility of 
their recovery upon their own faith. He makes his 
strongest appeal for health in the forsaking the life 
of sin and henceforth walking in the embrace of 
Christ and harmonizing behavior with Christian 
idealism. 

In rehearsing the results of these healers we may 
confidently affirm that less than one per cent. of 


70 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


those who attend the meetings give proof of per- 
manent cure or removal of their disabilities. Yet 
we cannot brush the testimonies aside as fraud and 
deception in all cases, for I am personally ac- 
quainted with two persons who were benefited. 
One could hear better. The other was partially 
paralyzed by electric shock in the street car serv- 
ice, wore his head in an iron brace, and, after at- 
tending Hickson’s mission the second time, could 
turn his head by his own volition and went back to 
the job he had been forced to relinquish after the 
accident and remained cured. 

No testimonies are sought by Mr. Hickson or 
Rev. Dr. A. J. G. Banks, of the Guild of the Naza- 
rene in the Protestant Episcopal Church, from 
those innumerable seekers for health who go away 
from Missions ungratified. If such were the case 
these sufferers would be reluctant to state their 
failure to obtain faith cure. What they testify 
and what the so-called cured testify would not be 
worth much anyway in medical jurisprudence with- 
out diagnosis before and after the prayer or treat- 
ment. Taking all these failures into consideration, 
and the absence of a diagnostician’s evidence, there 
still remains a residuum of success for which we 
can account only by Christian faith of an organized 
body of believers, or of faith of individuals aided 
by prayer. 

The Society of the Nazarene has between six and 
seven thousand members loosely federated in parish 


CHRISTIAN HEALING rf 


groups or prayer circles throughout the English- 
speaking world and in the foreign mission field. 
Their principal efforts are to pray for the sick, to 
visit them and to study The Nazarene, a monthly 
magazine issued by the Director. These issues con- 
tain testimonials of cures authenticated in many 
instances by eye witnesses. One notable case was 
that of a bishop in Australia whose wife was to be 
operated upon for cancer, but upon examination 
five surgeons attested that she was not subject to 
this dread malady as they had previously diagnosed. 
Dr. Banks is getting testimonies of this sort con- 
stantly, and a month does not pass but that two or 
three dozen well-authenticated cures are reported 
to him. This organization is indorsed and has the 
formal approval of over two-thirds of the Bishops 
of the Protestant Episcopal Church. 

It is noteworthy that where these Guilds of the 
Society of the Nazarene have been established, the 
congregations desire to elect a rector who is sym- 
pathetic with the work, that it may be continued. 
Furthermore, Dr. Banks finds unprejudiced persons 
not interested in the Society, but who declare there 
is a deeper spirituality and harmony in the parishes 
where these Guilds are meeting. I mention this 
because I have observed it in St. John’s the Baptist 
Church, Germantown, Philadelphia, and believe 
that the results of prayers for the sick deepens the 
respect and love of the members for one another 
and for the Church, Therefore, they are perform- 


72 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


ing the twofold work of Christian Healing and 
Christian Service, uniting to drive out evils of the 
body and of the soul. This organization was 
founded by Rev. H. B. Wilson in 1914, and incor- 
porated after his death in 1923 by the present 
Director, A. J. Gayner Banks, of Mountain Lakes, 
New Jersey. 

Dr. C. R. Brown, Dean of Yale Divinity School, 
on page 55 of his Faith and Health, published » 
in 1924, states that a man of private means in- 
vestigated one hundred of the cases who claimed 
to be healed by Mr. Hickson’s laying-on-of-hands. 
He found that over two-thirds of the patients died 
in less than two years from the very diseases which 
physicians had pronounced incurable, but from 
which the patients themselves professed to have 
been triumphantly cured by faith. The patients 
were honorable, no doubt, but they were not capa- 
ble of making a competent diagnosis. They felt 
better, so they declared themselves healed. Under 
the excitement of a crowd, the personal attention 
of this earnest and prayerful healer, and the exalta- 
tion of the moment, they testified to cures, and we 
may presume that, for a time, their general health 
was what they claimed it to be. 

My aim is to establish the truth and present 
facts, and what I have above said is not in any way 
disparaging the present-day practice of carrying out 
the Savior’s command: “Into whatsoever city or 
village ye enter, heal the sick that are therein, and 


‘CHRISTIAN HEALING 73 


say The Kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” 
This He said to the seventy disciples. 

Faith-cure depends today, as it did in New Testa- 
ment times, upon the attitude of the mind and the 
intellectual training of the people of the present as 
well as the concentration and enthusiasm of their 
religious motives. 


I0. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 


Christian Science, strictly speaking, is not a 
church, if we define the word to mean an institu- 
tion to present the entire Gospel to the entire peo- 
ple. For example, St. Paul did not mean he was 
making Christian Scientists when in the Acts of 
the Apostles he proclaims: “The Lord added daily 
unto the church those who were being saved.” Yet 
this admirable body of men, women and children 
numbering, by their own calculation, over one and 
one-half millions in the United States, and approxi- 
mately one million in the 1916 United States Re- 
ligious Census, are performing in their own ways 
a function of the Church. 

Before the bar of reason, let us take Christian 
Science in all fairness and impartiality, judge its 
merits from exact quotations from Science and 
Health. If Mrs. Eddy’s statements are contradic- 
tory, illogical or unscientific, that is something for 
which she must be accused, not I. I use her own 
words from her Key to the Scriptures, now read 
twice on Sundays in every temple of her followers, 


74: HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


and nothing else zs read or preached but a few 
irrelevant passages of the Bible. “Man is never 
sick, for mind is not sick and matter cannot be. 
If the lungs are disappearing, this is but one of 
the beliefs of mortal mind” (page 392). ‘The less 
we know or think about hygiene, the less we are 
predisposed to sickness” (page 388). ‘‘Physicians 
examine the pulse, tongue, lungs to discover the 
condition of matter; when, in fact, all is mind and 
the body is the substratum of mortal mind to whose 
higher mandate it must respond” (whatever that 
may mean) (page 370). “Treatises on anatomy, 
physiology and health, sustained by what is termed 
material law, are the promoters of sickness and 
disease” (page 72). “Christian Science is the pure 
evangelistic truth. Outside of this truth, all is un- 
stable error” (page 202). ‘‘Obedience to those so- 
called laws of health has not checked disease” (page 
66). “The dream of disease is like the dreams we 
have in sleep, wherein everyone recognizes suffer- 
ing to be wholly in mortal mind” (page 416). 
“Christian Science heals organic disease as well as 
functional. It handles the most malignant con- 
tagion with perfect assurance. One disease is no 
more real than another.” 

In a later edict Mrs. Eddy proclaims to her 
healers: “For the present C. S. are counseled to 
obey the law in regard to contagious diseases.” 
This statement gives away her whole case in ad- 
mitting there are contagious diseases in existence. 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 75 


In her textbook she denies the reality of all disease, 
explaining it is ‘an illusion of mortal mind.” 
Neither the founder nor most of the followers have 
been competent to diagnose contagious diseases. 

See what atrocious sins, therefore, can be and 
are committed in the name of science and Chris- 
tianity. All laws for public health and preventive 
medicine, spread and diffusion of epidemics, in- 
cipient, malignant and infectious diseases are per- 
mitted to slay families and communities unchecked. 
The most tender sentiments of affection, care of 
loved ones, mutual helpfulness and plain knowledge 
of facts, and the immediate remedies to prevent 
death and pain are, with utter disregard to moral 
conduct, swept aside with no heed to Christian 
ethics. ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens and so ful- 
fill the law of Christ.” 

The only relation between Christian Science and 
Christianity is the teaching of faith-cure in the 
churches of Christian Scientists. If they believe in 
immortality, forgiveness of sins, sacraments, the 
Kingdom of God, no emphasis is placed upon these 
teachings of the Gospel. The founder—this oft- 
married and flighty character of greed, arrogance 
(shall we say imposture?)—-professes equality of 
character and power with Jesus Christ. My au- 
thority for such a statement is Frederick W. Pea- 
body’s The Religio-Medical Masquerade. Mr. 
Peabody, of the Massachusetts Bar, has openly 
challenged the Mother Church to contradict, or sue 


76 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


for libel, some other assertions he makes concern- 
ing the practices and policies of the dominant cor- 
poration for the propaganda of Mrs. Eddy’s doc- 
trines. In many cases he has won suits against 
them when retaining certain persons whom the 
courts decided were treated in anything but a 
Christlike manner. After a thorough investigation 
of every edition of Science and Health (first pub- 
lished in 1875), and every issue of The Christian 
Science Journal, Mr. Peabody comes to this con- 
clusion: “Christian Science is a deliberate fraud 
foisted upon mankind by Mrs. Eddy in the name 
of religion, for the mere purpose of extorting money 
from. credulous people.” 

The fact that organized Christian Science has 
never attempted to sue Mr. Peabody for the state- 
ments he makes is fair proof they have no case to 
withstand what, in the event of their having one, 
would be most criminal libel. 

The harm to innocent, suffering children in the 
name of science is alone sufficient to condemn this 
most wicked and avaricious fraud the modern world 
has known. Christian Science is not religion; it is 
not medicine; it is the greatest hodge-podge of clap- 
trap jargon in pseudo-psychological terms, mixed 
with pious humbug, ever written outside of fairy 
books for a bogus healing system, so their patients 
inform my family physician. 

In this discussion, I desire to be absolved from 
having any personal feeling for or against Mrs. 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 77 


Eddy which would warp my judgment. I refrain, 
on purpose, from lowering the discussion to an 
argumentum ad hominem (argument according to 
men). For we know in logic our likes and dislikes, 
or the personalities which put forth and expound 
principles, do not invalidate their logic by odious 
reference to their wicked lives. Such is the case 
here. 

On the other hand, Christian Science has done 
great good to society. It has directed much of the 
flotsam and jetsam of our Church membership to 
an intensive study of the Scriptures. It has cured 
many imaginary ills. Physicians say that one-third 
to one-half of their office practice consists of such. 
It has elevated the tone of thought, of conversation, 
of outlook on life of many who have never had any 
other optimistic view of life presented to them. 
Thus far the Christian Scientists have never re- 
sponded to the challenge to produce one evidence 
of a scientifically diagnosed case which has been 
cured. One of our most popular monthlies (The 
Cosmopolitan) published an article by an English- 
man who professed to be cured of fatty degenera- 
tion of the heart. The issue sold like wildfire. 
Within ninety days of publication this author died 
of fatty degeneration of the heart, according to the 
post mortem examination. Christian Science, aside 
from such false testimonies, undoubtedly has to its 
credit cures of functional disorders. It has in- 
creased the interest of a million people in the gen- 


78 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


eral reading of the Bible, and thereby has held up 
the readers to ideals and moral standards to which 
they were indifferent or ignorant before seeking 
health by a short-cut. 

The preposterous affirmations in Science and 
Health seem to blind the Eddyites to all sense of 
humor. Mrs. Eddy was quite oblivious to all use 
of common sense, and, notably, of a redeeming 
sense of humor. That the Temples should adver- 
tise healers; and their taking fees for absent treat- 
ment is quite ridiculous when they profess to be 
following Him who said: “Heal the sick—freely ye 
have received, freely give.” A Christian Science 
healer has a lucrative position, ordinarily; no clinics 
are provided for the poor. In fact, poverty is non- 
existent so far as they wish to deal with it, merely 
an error of mortal mind, like lockjaw or other symp- 
toms of blood poisoning. 

If we examine Christian Science, therefore, as 
any serious attempt to combat sin, we find that their 
interests with the unpleasant things of life are nil. 
For they do not exist. How could one be of a com- 
bative temperament with a foe who is made of the 
stuff that dreams are made of? On this account 
we discover the character of the faces of those 
entering or leaving one of these Temples; many 
moral failures, defeated characters who have had 
such a hard time with sin that to get rid of it they 
gladly accept a doctrine that it does not exist. 
Hence the constrained, forced smile, fixed phrases 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 79 


and aloofness of these converts develop from try- 
ing to live in an unreal world. Put them in a cold 
shower, in the dentist’s chair, out in the orchards 
with the bees, in the laboratory under an electric 
shock, freezing weather and frost-bitten hands, or 
other painful realities of nature. My observation 
reveals to me that they experience all the realities 
of this world that others of us do. Deny it how 
they will, they do suffer with disease. Otherwise 
how is it Mrs. Eddy ever died? They admit she 
died, and all of them will eventually follow her 
to that bourne from whence no traveler returns. 

The six standard publications of the Mother 
Church are spreading light with darkness, queer 
testimonies, and are as follows: Christian Science 
Journal (monthly); Christian Science Quarterly 
Bible Lessons; Christian Science Sentinel (month- 
ly); Christian Science Der Herold (monthly); 
Christian Science Le Herant (monthly); Christian 
Science Monitor (daily). 

Certainly these diffuse many choice ideas 
throughout the world. On the front page of each 
issue we read that Mrs. M. B. G. P. Eddy was the 
discoverer of Christian Science. Her writings say 
this was by direct revelation from God. As a mat- 
ter of fact, a Dr. P. H. Quimby, in Portland, Maine, 
gave her the idea of mental healing in 1862. Lyman 
Powell quotes from Quimby the following phrases: 
“Science of Health. Matter has no intelligence. 
Matter is an error. Understanding is God. All 


80 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


sciences are part of God. Error is sickness; truth 
is health. Christian Science.’’ Thus the very name 
of Mrs. Eddy’s cult is a copy of that which she had 
received from this obscure physician. Moreover, 
Christian Healers and practitioners whose names 
are published and advertised in The Journal, if at 
all well read, cannot but know the founder was one 
of the biggest imitators in the nineteenth century, 
as well as one to supply a theme of keen merriment 
to such a humorist as Mark Twain. From first to 
last, these papers among their news and reviews 
have contained testimonials. The Journal, for in- 
stance, of February, 1925, says: “Records of inves- 
tigation are kept in the publishing office.” If they 
had one bona fide evidence of a reputable citizen, 
it would be worth more than all their pages of un- 
signed articles. 

Some are signed, however. The grammar, symp- 
toms, diagnosis and cure is therein revealed to be 
the testimony of persons who have no knowledge 
of human nature. One patient describes ills which 
she said existed simultaneously in a child which 
were utterly impossible for the person to have and 
live. Another case of scarlet fever and diphtheria 
conjointly was cured in a few hours. Now those 
of us who are familiar with scarlet fever know how 
apparent the speedy cures often are. This I wit- 
nessed daily in Val de Grace Hospital in Paris in 
the great Allied Concentration Ward for this mal- 
ady. Yet what gross ignorance is perpetrated by 


| 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 81 


The Christian Science Journal by insinuating the 
danger to the community of contagion had passed, 
when we know it lasts not less than twenty-one 
days. I could go on to mention hundreds of worse 
dangers propagated by these periodicals which are 
endangering public health. 

If one asks what is Christian Science doing in 
the way of Christ to eradicate sin, to combat its 
evil, the overwhelming evidence is that they do all 
they can to advance the cause of sin and death; 
but, not believing there is such a thing as sin, of 
course they free themselves from this charge of 
increasing and encouraging that which they bla- 
tantly say does not exist in the above publications. 


II, EMMANUEL MOVEMENT 

Dr. Elwood Worcester, a former rector of St. 
Stephen’s Church, Philadelphia, of which the cele- 
brated nerve specialist, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, was 
a member and close friend of the minister, opened 
Health Classes in his Church in Boston about 1905. 
These were to instruct the poor and others in mat- 
ters of personal and social and mental hygiene. 
Dr. Samuel McComb, also a well-trained psychol- 
ogist, was assistant to the rector and cooperated in 
this movement to alleviate certain conditions, espe- 
cially those who were suffering with tuberculosis 


) and were poor, too poor to go to Arizona or local 


/ sanitariums. The people were taught helpful ways 


({ 


82 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


of caring for their health. Associated with these 
clergymen were Dr. Richard Cabot, Dr. Barker, of 
Johns Hopkins, Dr. Putnam and other celebrated 
specialists. Topics discussed were such as these: 

Worry; Anger; Habit; Suggestion; Insomnia; 

Nervousness; Peace in the Home; What the Will 
Can Do; What Prayer Can Do; and similar themes. 
Dr. Misia met these Ra trerita personally after 
they had been examined by reputable physicians. 
Dr. Cabot made a careful investigation of results 
of these interviews after the first year. Among one 
hundred and seventy-eight cases, twenty of neuras- 
thenia were reported much improved, sixteen 
sightly improved, seventeen not at all improved. 
Among alcoholics, eight cases out of twenty-two 
were improved. One-fourth of cases of fears, 
obsessions, hysteria were improved. Slight im- 
provement was reported among drug addicts. 
These figures are available in Dr. Worcester’s book, 
Religion and Medicine. 

In the past two decades thousands have flocked 
to Emmanuel Church, Boston. That this move- 
ment has been a victory over sin through the in- 
creased health and vigor of the body by aid of 
prayer-faith and common-sense use of medical ad- 
vice is apparent. Dr. Charles R. Brown, in his 
account in Faith and Health, says: “Many sad, 
discouraged men and women were lifted into new 
hope and enabled to take up the old life again with 
a better prospect of victory.” They had a new 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 83 


spiritual outlook. Some who were meditating 
suicide, through the loss of all interest in life, were 
restrained and put in the way of living honorable 
and useful lives. This movement has been repeated 
sporadically in various churches, chiefly among the 
Episcopalians, since its inception. But few have 
the capacity or the training or the codperation of 
the medical profession to carry on such successful 
clinics and classes as those of Emmanuel Church. 
Dr. Loring Batten was the most successful follower 
at St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie in New York City, 
and his successor, Dr. Guthrie, does a little along 
this line. But chiefly it is a charity to obtain free 
medical examination or cheaper treatment of those 
who need spiritual and medical attention. A few 
amateurs among the clergy have endeavored to fill 
their pews with prospects of reaching the masses 
by this means, but the movement has practically 
reverted to the place where it began. It has intro- 
duced to clergy and laity a taste for such reading 
as Ralph Waldo Trine’s In Tune With the Infinite, 
Annie P. Call’s Power Through Repose, and 
Charles B. Patterson’s The Will to Be Well, to 
show what can be gained for spiritual peace after 
the spiritual combat and physical efficiency. 


12. COUE, PREACHING, AND THE NANCY SCHOOL 


Modern preaching conveys to congregations 
much of the method of auto-suggestion. Mental 


84 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


and spiritual forces are thus employed as they have 
been for years by Liebault and Bernheim and of 
late by Charles Baudoin and Emile Coué. Coué 
insisted, while in Boston, Philadelphia and else- 
where in America, in the verbatim lectures which 
it has been my privilege to read, that he is not a 
healer, and had never healed anybody. 

It was a personal benefit to me to pay one visit 
to his clinic in the delightful town of Nancy in 
1918, while in France on a special mission of the 
First Army Replacement Battalion. 

The results to be achieved would be due to the 
realization of each person’s own thought. He 
comes to call the latent powers of imagination to 
be the instrument of their well-being. “You have 
been sowing bad seed in your Unconscious.” His 
peremptory personality, his cheery optimism over 
the absurdity of chronic ills depressing persons 
needlessly, and patients are led to laugh at their 
former submission. He brought a merry heart 
which for many was better than medicine. His is 
the gospel of “Rejoice, and again I say, Rejoice.” 
He emphasizes the ever vigilant control of the un- 
conscious mind—“as a man thinketh in his heart, 
so is he,” said the Savior. Think you are better 
and you will become better. “Day by day in every 
way I am getting better and better,” repeated ten 
times every night before falling asleep and just 
upon waking, is more productive to health and 
morals than morbid introspection. He reéducates 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 85 


the imagination, giving substance to things hoped 
for, assuring evidence for things as yet unseen. 
Bowdin’s book shows us how pain is removed by 
repeating rapidly and decidedly: “It is passing, it 
is passing, it is passing, it is going, going, gone.” 
So it goes if not rooted in some serious physiological 
disturbance or lesion. This will give a mind 
troubled in other respects perfect peace, thus elimi- 
nating the temptations to live in sin. 

One criticism made of Coué is that his own gentle 
spirit, which thinketh no evil, his own simplicity 
of life and integrity, gives no adequate recognition 
of the fact that conditions of sin have a close rela- 
tion and result in disease. [Ill temper, hatred, 
wrong ambitions, cross purposes, immoral habits 
account for many ills, as we know. But this criti- 
cism, although valid, is a point the clergy make use 
of in their preaching to illustrate the fact that a 
mind and soul which is bent upen becoming better 
and better in the measure of the stature of the 
fullness of Christ thinketh no evil. 

Although Coué and the Nancy School emphasize 
faith, they ignore it from its religious aspects. 
Here the clergy endeavor to convince us in their 
sermons in these days that auto-suggestion and 
faith linked up with the eternal Son of God, with 
Jesus and the power of His resurrection, gain a 
fellowship and advantage in the cooperation with 
the source of all health and goodness. In his imagi- 
nation the evildoer and the bodily sufferer, through 


86 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


his sacred faith, may run and not be weary, walk 
and not be faint. From the sermons published in 
our Church periodicals, what we hear by radio and 
elsewhere, we see the strong effect and appeal to the 
religious imagination and auto-suggestion. 


13. SUGGESTIVE THERAPEUTICS 


The therapeutic value of Christianity is acknowl- 
edged by leaders in the science of medicine and the 
art of surgery. It is the privilege and custom of 
those engaged in the ministry of healing among the 
Churches to employ whatever methods and persons 
obtainable to assist in the scientific processes of 
reputable physicians to alleviate sickness and to 
promote character. In this connection suggestion 
is of incalculable worth. 

Suggestion is the subconscious realization of an 
idea. It is the putting into operation of the ideo- 
reflex power which exists in the dominant thought 
of the influence of Jesus Christ. Suggestion is in- 
tensified and made effective according to the co- 
efficient of the emotional factors involved. Reli- 
gion creates this emotion and sustains it. Every 
idea tends to undergo transformation into reality. 
Wholesome and helpful ideas centered about Christ 
subconsciously transform themselves into corre- 
sponding realities if the attention and emotion are 
sufficient to bring them above the subliminal con- 
sciousness into moral actions. Purely physical 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 87 


actions do not necessarily enter the focus of con- 
sciousness. When an idea is attended by a strong 
emotion, there is more likelihood that this idea will 
be suggestively accomplished. It is the office of the 
ministry of healing to attach the desires and ideas 
of health to the deep-seated and intense emotions 
of our Christian consciousness. 

There is a law of suggestive therapeutics known 
as that of reversed effort. A workable suggestion, 
and one that is accepted and believed in by the 
patient, cannot be counteracted but is intensified 
by conscious wishes. 

Auto-suggestion is a stimulus to moral energy. 
What was a wish becomes, through ‘the energence 
of the subconscious, an indomitable will. There- 
fore, good wishes transpose themselves into actions 
and initiate practices without the effort of will 
power upon the part of the patient. An incredible 
amount of work can be done by those who formerly 
suffered from lassitudé or the sin of laziness. Sin- 
ful ‘moods of despondency, low spirits, gloom and 
depressing vagaries are swept away by plunging 
oneself into a condition of auto-hypnosis. The fact 
that faith has cured one of physical ills educates 
the mind to the knowledge of the value of auto- 
suggestion in its relation to those practices which 
are harmful and yet under subconscious control. 

Suggestion empowers us_ to control something 
within in our physical and mental organisms inde- 
pendent | of the will. It is the regulator of our 


88 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


internal mechanism upon which our conscious 
actions depend. Upon it rests the nexus of causa- | 
tion. Medicine and_auto- suggestion are forces 
complementary to one another, » one acting from 
without, the other from within. Hence auto-sug- 
gestion comes under the new Nancy School as a 
factor in the reéducation of the will rather than a 
panacea for the physician’s art. One who acquires 
facility with auto-suggestion is no longer nature’s 
slave. Instead he is one who by use of ideoreflex 
has become master of his will. Such an one is 
prepared to combat sin and the effects of sin upon 
the body and the mind and progress in personality 
employing all the spiritual aids of religion. 

To this law there is one exception. No sugges- 
tion, nor hypnosis, can compel a person to willingly 
perform an immoral act contrary to his desires. 
To illustrate this, recall your first experience on a 
pair of skates. You suggested to yourself you were 
going to run into a tree, and though there may have 
been a wide area to pass it, sure enough, your sub- 
conscious mind steers you, with the precision of a 
pugilist, to hit that tree. When the end or aim has 
been suggested, the undermind finds a method of 
control of our nervous, physiological and muscular 
behavior r adequate to carry out the suggestion. As 
the poet might have said—there is a subconscious 
which shapes our end, rough hew it how we will. 
It is the function of the Church, through its min- 
istry of healing, to direct this unconscious or sub- 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 89 


conscious activity both before and after cures are 
made. Because cures are effected, due to faith in 
a physician or minister or healer, it logically follows 
that even greater emotional states can be aroused 
by those persons who have effected a cure. Even 
a lion will respect and apparently love the keeper 
who has removed a thorn from its paw. Likewise 
faith, which heals in proportion as it becomes an 
emotional state, will cause the brutishness of our 
natures to be governed by the higher motives of 
religion and mutual service. 


I4. MODERN MIRACLES 


Jesus Christ is a practicing physician today. 
His office is in every Church which uses His pre- 
scription of Christian Faith. A new fad for health 
has swept over the land, such as is typified by the 
publication of such magazines as Physical Culture 
and other publications, the establishment of the 
Life Extension Institute and the advertising of our 
leading insurance companies. The Churches have, 
in these days, been challenged as to what they can 
do to promote health. Glance over the topics ad- 
vertised in the Saturday religious page of the daily 
papers and you find approximately one-fourth of 
the sermon-titles treat of physical well-being. Such 
strong Episcopal Churches as Trinity and Grace, 
New York City, advertise the power of Christ to 
heal. The General Convention of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church in 1922, according to Daggett’s 


90 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


Are There Modern Miracles?, indorsed the efficacy 
of prayer as an instrument in performance of 
miracles. 

A definition of a miracle which I would propose 
is an occurrence or manifestation of divine law and 
action for ethical ends according to observations 
not at present explainable. 

When Rev. H. B. Wilson was rector of Holy 
Cross, in Brooklyn, he frequently visited patients 
in the hospital next door to his home. He told them 
of Bible truths. They improved astonishingly. It 
amazed the surgeons, who could not account for 
these modern and rapid recoveries otherwise than 
through the means of Mr. Wilson’s prayers. In 
1909 he organized the Society of the Nazarene, 
which was incorporated in 1924 under Rev. Dr. 
A. J. G. Banks, and in 1925 located at Mountain 
Lakes, New Jersey. From Nova Scotia to Los 
Angeles, from Oregon to Florida, Guilds to pray 
for recovery of the sick meet week by week. All 
of these report improvements in the health of a 
small proportion of their members. But these 
testimonies are valid, authenticated by eyewit- 
nesses of good standing in their several communi- 
ties. Mr. Wilson himself said in 1923: “Eighteen 
years ago I had a valvular heart lesion so serious 
that a consultation of physicians had decided I 
could not live a year. Laying aside all these pre- 
scriptions, I was healed wholly and completely by 
prayer.” On file in Dr. Banks’ office are heaps of 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 91 


testimonials of cures from both functional and 
organic diseases. These may be examined by who- 
soever will. 

The Christian and Missionary Alliance, founded 
by Rev. A. B. Simpson, an ex-Presbyterian minis- 
ter, in 1898, which has branches in three hundred 
and fifty Churches in the United States, reports 
many cures and consequent conversions every year. 
_ Their method, primarily, is through evangelistic 
preaching. 

When the Rt. Rev. William T. Manning, Bishop 
of New York, in 1919 vouched for James Moore 
Hickson, it made many conservative Christians 
open their eyes, as well as their Bibles, to learn 
that the laying-on-of-hands has Scriptural authen- 
ticity. The Bishop Coadjutor of Massachusetts 
gives this testimony as the result of Mr. Hickson’s 
visit to Grace Church, New York: ‘There have 
been many cases of spiritual growth of the indi- 
vidual through the Guild of the Nazarene. We 
know today that the spiritual man and the physical 
man are so interrelated that what affects the soul 
must also register its effect on the body. Physical 
healing is, as it were, a sequel of the spiritual heal- 
ing.” The clergy of Grace Church attest this heal- 
ing, but remark that they are very rarely instan- 
taneous. One of the clergy, Rev. J. W. Sutton, 
cooperating with Mr. Hickson, referring to faith- 
cures, says: “Christian Healing is one of the normal 
activities of the Church for which it is commissioned 


92 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


today, as it was over nineteen hundred years ago. 
Miracles are not only possible today, but they are 
the most natural things in the world. We have 
seen them here at Trinity, where the cures that have 
been witnessed leave no room for doubt of the heal- 
ing power for both organic and functional disease.” 
He possesses testimonials over physicians’ own 
signatures. Rev. William T. Walsh, of St. Luke’s, 
New York, says of his Thursday meetings: “Some- 
one is blessed with healing every week.” 

If one desires to accumulate evidence of modern 
miracles with their relation to character formation 
and spiritual uplift, he would do well to take in 
hand the recent book, Heal the Sick, written by 
Mr. J. M. Hickson, and published by Methuen and 
Company, of London, in 1925. This is a compila- 
tion of results from the Healing Evangelist’s travels 
over the civilized world. Most of the authority 
for these statements are penned by others than the 
author, which gives witness from various types of 
mind. In this book Mr. Hickson acknowledges 
himself to be a healer through the indwelling of 
the Holy Spirit. These indorsements will convince 
the most agnostic critic that something inexplain- 
able happens in the health and living of those who 
have been cured. The reaction to these missions 
is a deeper earnestness on the part of the pa- 
rishioners and a renewed loyalty and attendance 
upon the Church. Bishops, clergy and laity partic- 
ipating in these missions attest the curative effects 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 93 


and improvements. The author reminds us (page 
267)—Christian Healing rightly understood is 
sacramental, that is, an extension and application 
of the incarnate life of Christ through the member 
of His Body (I Cor. 2:15). 

Mr. Hickson’s most remarkable results were in 
Australia and America. Reprints of letters of 
authorization from bishops and prelates of the 
Church of England are included in this book. 

Another evangelist in this field is Rev. F. F. 
Bosworth, an itinerant evangelist. Three and four 
thousand usually attend his nightly tent meetings. 
In one meeting in Brooklyn eight hundred and two 
testified they had been helped physically and 
morally by prayer. Although this is of no scientific 
value, yet it is unlikely to presume that nearly a 
thousand persons were misled or mistaken at one 
time. Mayor E. V. Babcock, of Pittsburgh, testi- 
fies to the fact that John Sproul, a tubercular 
patient who attended a revival meeting October 15, 
1921, was undeniably cured and able to resume his 
employment after unsuccessful years of agony in 
the best sanitariums. Likewise Madam Lambert, 
of Detroit, a well-known opera singer, did not have 
to undergo a major operation. Her physician, 
whose name I purposely withhold, writes: “I can 
find no trace of your former trouble.” Both of 
these persons are answering requests for prayers 
for the sick and have as large a visiting list as many 
physicians. Their lives have been given and con- 


94 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


secrated to God unselfishly for the good of others, 
whereas they had no particular concern about the 
sin in others’ lives before these miracles happened. 
They have gone on the frontier of Christ’s army to 
combat sin. So also has Miss Mattie Perry, for- 
merly of the Bible Institute, Elhanan, New Hamp- 
shire; Warren Collens, a pianist of Fort Worth, 
Texas; and Raymond T. Rithey, of Houston, 
Texas, who have entered the crusade for souls 
grateful to God for Christian healing, while Rev. 
P. C. Nelson left Conley Baptist Church, Detroit, 
to enter the work of Christian healing as the con- 
sequence of his own experience with a severe injury 
to his knee. 

I have attended Aimee Semple McPherson’s re- 
vivals. Recently she erected a $100,000 temple in 
Los Angeles to carry on her work. Referring to~ 
the spiritual benefits of Miss McPherson’s enter- 
prise, Rev. Matthew Holderby, of Chicago, says, 
after actual miracles he has witnessed: “In the 
presence of the manifest evidence of the Great 
Physician’s healing power we give her our unquali- 
fied indorsement.” This minister says he experi- 
enced personal benefits from the services. The 
following assurance of modern miracles comes from 
Rev. W. I. Gates and Rev. Dr. Bitler: ‘Christian 
Healing is at the doors of the Methodist Church 
today, and we’ve got to admit it.””,» The McKendree 
Methodist Church, in Washington, D. C., maintains 
a weekly healing service. The pastor, Rev. C. A. 


CHRISTIAN HEALING 95 


Shreve, says: ‘We have witnessed the healing of a 
great many people. Incidentally, we have added 
seven hundred to our Church membership.” I have 
equally verified evidence from Boston, St. Louis, 
Philadelphia, and city after city, where Christian 
Healing is not merely vouched for but is a custom. 

How these modern miracles are taking place and 
affecting the lives and characters of so many people, 
we do not know. Coué says it is through the imagi- 
nation, Hickson through the sacraments, Freud 
through the unconscious mind and mental com- 
plexes, Dr. Banks through suggestive therapeutics 
and the companionship of Jesus Christ. Dr. R. S. 
Cabot, of the staff of the Massachusetts General 
Hospital, says: “It is possible that the clue to the 
action of prayer will be found in the emotions. 
Beneficent emotions, such as faith and love, may 
act chemically to produce health.” Bishop Charles 
H. Brent, in The Mount of Vision, says: ‘‘Jesus 
Christ heals by stimulating spiritual faculties to 
appropriate health.” 

Rev. F. Cole Sherman resigned from St. Paul’s 
Episcopal Church, Akron, Ohio, to direct the Amer- 
ican Guild of Health at Cleveland, and he has hun- 
dreds of affidavits from physicians of recognized 
standing which testify to the healing power of faith 
and the miracles otherwise unaccounted for by 
medical science. Moreover, the President of the 
Guild is, himself, a tuberculosis-cure through 
prayer, and he possesses the X-ray plates to prove 


96 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


it. The American Guild of Health organized to 
restore and reénforce to fuller expression the min- 
istry of healing as an inherent part of the pastoral 
office of the Church. It is completely loyal to 
scientific principles and methods, has an imposing 
array of dignitaries of the Episcopal Church on its 
Advisory Council, of which Rt. Rev. T. J. Reese, 
D.D., is Chairman. A monthly magazine appears 
from their office under the name of Applied 
Religion. 

Besides those groups and organizations already 
mentioned, the only other incorporated bodies 
doing this work at the present time under the aus- 
pices of orthodox Churches are The English Guild 
of Health, The Canadian Guild of Health in Christ 
Jesus, The Society of the Divine Compassion, in 
England, The English Church Mystical Union. 
Another growing organization (purely evangelistic) 
is the Echo Park Evangelical Association, Inc., 
which is Miss McPherson’s popular society. This 
is stronger in the far western states. Their monthly 
magazine is titled The Bridal Call Foursquare. 

All of these societies vouch for the occurrence 
of modern miracles through the ministry of healing. 


III 
HEALING IN ITS SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 


I. COMBATING SIN 


Y own experience with Healing Missions 
demonstrates that those whose condition 


has been improved by faith and prayers 

are living more normal and moral lives than they 
were before they presented themselves at the altar 
for healing. I have had these persons under close 
observation for five years before and after the Mis- 
sions were held in my parish. Before the first 
Mission was held by the Rev. H. St. Clair Hath- 
away, of the Pro-cathedral, Phila., the parishion- 
ers were a most unhappy and quarrelsome lot of 
people, constantly at strife among themselves and 
about to be sold out by'the sheriff. Their minister 
had been not only poorly rewarded, but unpaid for 
three months, and their respect for him and for one 
another was most negligible. Then came the curing 
Christ into our midst. The result is we call our- 
selves very truthfully, and our slogan is unchal- 
lenged, when we say in a paper of over five hundred 
thousand circulation, we are “The Most Friendly 
Church In Town.” | 

Only a very few persons were healed, or re- 

97 


98 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


ported that they were benefited by prayer. To be 
exact, there were twenty-one out of two thousand 
and more who attended the services. I will not 
say any but two of these were actually cured. But 
I do know of two others, who were at the point of 
death and were cases proclaimed utterly hopeless 
by the family physicians, and would pass away 
surely, as they said, within a week, who are still liv- 
ing after four years and do their customary day’s 
work. In both instances the patients at the time 
were over seventy years old. I will say that, in my 
opinion, the health of all these twenty-one was im- 
proved. When I asked them to bring me a cer- 
tificate of a doctor to prove their diagnosis, they 
replied there was no use spending the money for, 
that they could see, and others about us could see 
they were better. And so they were. A striking 
case in Rev. Mr. Hathaway’s ministry is the cure 
of lockjaw, and the corroboration of doctors and 
nurses who had given up the case as too far gone 
for recovery in the Norristown, Pennsylvania, 
Hospital. 

In the second Healing Mission held by Rev. A. 
J. G. Banks, Director of the Society of the Naza- 
rene, there were reported eleven cures out of the 
fifteen hundred persons attending. One of the more 
noteworthy of these is a man whom I know who 
lost the power of speech through an explosion on 
a railroad in Virginia. It was a typical shell-shock 
case. On the fourth night of the Mission over 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS . 99 


three hundred people heard that man testify very 
audibly of his cure in open meeting. The other 
cases included impaired hearing, neuritis, colds, 
dipsomania, evil habits and minor ailments. My 
experience not only with those who reported they 
were healed but with the entire body of people who 
attended these services is that the claim of Christ 
and His power, demonstrated before their very 
eyes, has intensified the spiritual life of the people 
to a hitherto impossible degree. Their private con- 
duct and relations to one another, so far as I am 
able to learn after diligent research and inquiry 
from others, has established the fact of the power 
of Christ to combat sin through the revival of the 
gift of healing in this Church, of which I am proud 
to be in charge. 

The behavior of our people has not caused the 
regret of any of our parents or neighbors, nor 
chagrin on the part of any child since these Mis- 
sions aroused these people to combat sin within 
themselves. By that I do not mean to imply that 
sin has vanished. We are not Holy Rollers nor 
Universalists, but old-fashioned Episcopalians come 
to life. We can recognize sin when we see it, and 
also know none are free from it. But the combat 
is on as it never was before the power of Christ to 
heal took possession of the imagination of our 
people. One of the persons who was cured of some 
trifling ailment reported that he was also cured of 
a five-year grouch. What a testimony that is for 


100 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


the combat against sin and salvation from evil and 
the renewal of life in Christ Jesus as Savior. For 
what is a grouch, as he expresses it, other than too 
much of self, a bigoted notion of what one ought to 
have instead of the meek and loving assertive con- 
sideration for others. 

That Christian Healing promotes virtue I am 
certain from personal observation. The first flower 
to rise from the seed of healing is gratitude. This 
‘virtue has a reflexive influence upon the sym- 
pathetic nervous system. It engenders all the more 
fully a sense of feeling well. It tends to make the 
former sufferer overlook the trivial, to see the 
spiritual values of the infinite and eternal love of 
Christ and to live in the atmosphere of worship 
and worthiness for the benefits received. This is 
not conjecture or theory, but the realities clearly 
demonstrable on the annual report of this parish 
and in the parochial activities of the Guilds, notably 
that of the consecrated efforts of the Wednesday 
Evening Health Class. 

“Love never faileth” is true of those who have 
experienced _faith-cure under my own observation. 
By that I mean there grows a deeper loyalty for_ 
the Christ ; and for His Church, a more generous 


[/ “support of the ministry (one of those healed was 





influenced ‘thereby. to enter * the m ministry), and of | 
Christian work in general, a spirit and reality of 
mutual helpfulness, a marked “enjoyment for re- 
ligious services, and I should say their restored 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 101 


health never fails to bring those benefited to a most 
sincere reverence for the sacraments of the Church 
and in their spiritual and moral preparation for 
them. 

Another effect_of the ministry of healing in the 
Church i is that it holds up before the congregations _ 
the reality of sin. It presents the fact that there 
is (as Scupoli calls his book) The Spiritual Combat. 
Mr. James Moore Hickson well says: “A living 
church is one in which the living Christ lives and 
walks, doing through its members what He did in 
the days of His flesh. It must therefore be a 
healing Church as well as a soul-saving Church. 
Spiritual healing rightly understood is sacramental. 
It is the extension through the members of His 
mystical body of His own incarnate life.” The 
sacramental phase of religion, I have noticed, is 
revalued by those whom Christ’s healing power has 
restored. They more fully appreciate the spirit of 
God in all things, hence the spirit of evil is over- 
come and cast out as these persons resort more and 
more to prayer and Christian faith. 

Much sin is committed through ignorance of 
God’s laws or indifference to them. But the Min- 
istry of Healing exacts a heart-searching on the 
part of every seeker for knowledge for ‘‘the truth 
as it is in Christ Jesus.” Anyone who wishes to 
know more about Christian Healing than he can 
discover in the pages of the Bible will be led even- 
tually through prayer to the author of that book, 


102 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


that he may discern the moral import of the Min- 
istry of Healing. For example, St. Paul says to the 
Corinthians: ‘The psychical (psykikos) man re- 
ceiveth not the things of the spirit of God.” 

The ministry of healing inculcates an altruistic 
impulse which goes further than merely helping the 
sick. The Church, other than a few pseudo- 
Christian cults, accepts no fees and would not bene- 
fit by another’s misfortune. This heightens the 
regard of sufferers for the nobler and ideal teach- 
ings of the religious element of the community. 
So soon as the Christian leaders accept pay for 
prayer they have their cause and teaching that 
“God so loved the world,” John 3:16, put to open 
criticism for insincerity. The Christian looks for 
his reward ultimately, if he looks for it at all, in 
such words as these: “I was sick and ye visited 
me.” That will be the gracious reward of the 
Master when He sets the worthy on His right hand 
to enter into the joy of their Lord. 

Christian Healing combats sin by awaking the 
spiritual consciousness. We learn in I Thess. 2:13, 
that the word of God effectually works in them that 
believe. Our spiritual consciousness perceives with 
keener vision the proportions of divine truth and 
the immanence of God in all things. It arouses 
the hope that he who hath begun a good work in 
us will perform it unto the end, and it equips every 
healed person with a reason for this hope (I Peter 


Sire), 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 103 


Perhaps I should be more specific and treat of 
the combat against specific sins. But standard 
works of theology inform us that sin, no matter 
what form it takes, is always the same. As arsenic 
is bad for the system, or lead or some other poison 
is detected by its malevolent symptoms, so sin is 
the same evil element cropping out in the weaker 
characteristics of our nature. 

Faith-cures, in so far as they are effective, give 
a cumulative value to trust in God. Now the 
greater trust there is in God, the less prone is the 
believer to trust in his own evil impulses. Our 
Lord lived a life of faith. St. Paul says: “TI live 
by the faith in the Son of God.” This deepens 
one’s responsibility to a life of integrity and self- 
control. Moral responsibility is the Christian’s 
response to God’s ability. This ability is repeat- 
edly expressed in prophecy, and last ofall in the 
Prophet of Nazareth. Faith, and especially that 
which has been tested and proven, settles one in 
one’s convictions. Now a person who has positive 
convictions may err, of course, but he is not vacil- 
lating in all manner of sin, first hot, then cold, as 
the person who has no decided principles by which 
to govern his actions. The overmastering love for 
Christ created and maintained by faith, which has 
worked miracles of healing, will cause a man to 
contend against every barrier of sin. This is why 
I insist faith is a faculty of the affection. 

True faith strives to accomplish more than God 


104 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


alone does. For example, Job, in chapter 23, verse 
12, says: “I have esteemed the words of his mouth 
‘more than my necessary food.” Again, we may 
repeat those familiar words of his in the thirteenth 
chapter: ‘“‘Though he slay me, yet will I trust him.” 
I said true faith strives; it perseveres. Rooted and 
grounded in the love for God, it never fears or asks 
doubting questions, nor halts lazily by the wayside. 
“This is the victory that overcometh the world, 
even our faith” (I John 5:4). Compare the faith- 
ful perseverance of Abraham marching onward, as 
alluded to in the twenty-third verse of James, sec- 
ond chapter. One who sincerely looks up to God 
for health and strength and moral victory, as did 
Abraham, is not afflicted nor downtrodden by that 
deadly sin of self-pity. Abraham was theocentric. 
Lot was self-centered. St. Paul refers to trium- 
phant faith, speaking of Abraham, who considered 
not the limitations of nature, because God was his 
goal and quest, but staggered on out of unbelief, 
became strong in faith and his character thereby 
was a glory to God, as we might freely render 
(Romans 15:13). By an unqualified surrender to 
God we become capable of assuming all the con- 
quering capacities of God’s promises. All things 
become possible to us who trust to God for guid- 
ance (Mark 9:23). If we hesitate to venture 
against the onslaught of sin or disease, we are by 
that very hesitancy betraying to God our lack of 
trust. The Christian realizes no act of faith is 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 105 


lost before the presence of God. With this thought 
in mind, one is drawn to a profound comprehension 
of divine immanence. Every moment will have its 
sacred realization that God is able to do exceed- 
ing abundantly above all that we ask or think 
(Ephesians 3:20). 

Furthermore, the joy resulting from faith expe- 
rienced in the ministry of healing does much to 
save one from sin. In my life as prison chaplain 
in the American Expeditionary Force, I was con- 
stantly impressed with the morose dispositions of 
those who were haled before the courts. The evil- 
doer not infrequently is of a sullen temperament. 
The bright, cheery comrade is seldom malicious. 
A faith making life cheerful has the staying power 
to resist the conquest of Satan if strengthened with 
prayer. He who said, “Be of good cheer, I have 
overcome the world,” can transform the gloomy 
outlook and the dark day into one of radiant re- 
sponse to his divine call: ‘Follow thou me.” As 
St. James says (1:2-4), we shall count it all joy 
to fall into ‘divers temptations, because we have 
the will to win and the imagination to see the beauty 
of a pure, unspotted life. Human nature unaided 
may be unable to go forward into the dark night 
singing (Job 35:10; Acts 16:25), but Christian 
character, touched by the spirit and curing hand 
of Christ, is linked to Him who has given us His 
Spirit, and shall abide with us forever. 


106 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


2. CONVERSION 


James, Starbuck and Harold Begbie give us 
cases and statistics of the transformed lives through 
religious conversion. The whole soul is turned to 
God. Life becomes theocentric rather than selfish 
or egocentric. Therefore, one who loves the Christ 
with heart and mind and soul, and enters His serv- 
ice and makes our Lord’s principles the essentials 
for conduct, acknowledges that it is God’s will for 
mankind to become pure in heart and intention, 
clear in mind, strong in religious motive, meek and 
content in spirit, poised in judgment, happy in cir- 
cumstances, abounding in vitality. Such is the ef- 
fect of conversion to Jesus Christ where we see it 
thoroughly accomplished. 

He in whom we live and have our being, and is 
the source of healing and calm of the universe, and 
controls the stars and our lives in the palm of His 
hand, and is manifest in Jesus Christ in chiefly 
showing pardon, pity and new life to souls, is not 
the One who sends disease. By means of some 
disobedience to natural law, conscious or uncon- 
scious, ill health enters our system. One who serves 
the Devil, or the worst that is in him, is never 
healthy. 

_. Conversion, whole-hearted belief in Jesus Christ, 
must take place before Christian Healing can be- 
come effective. We fully appreciate the fact that 
charlatans, mental healers, potions, drugs and 


mi 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 107 


charms have their accredited cures. This is not by 
means, however, of the touchstone of the Holy 
Spirit of God. 

In Christian Healing as an effect of conversion 
Christ reaches in for the far greater thing, the 
healing of the spirit, the source of life-giving ener- 
gies. In no instance in the New Testament did a 
miracle of healing happen unless the patient be- 
lieved Jesus Christ to be the Son of God with 
power. When this truth is learned healing com- 
mences, although it seldom ends there. It goes on 
through a disciplinary process of suffering and pa- 
tience, proving and provoking that very faith which 
started the good work. The unconverted are healed 
by devils, as are also those who have no love or 
trust in the Savior. The condition for Christ’s 
healing rests upon the same requirements as salva- 
tion of the soul. In fact, healing of the body is 
the result of healing of the soul and the driving 
out of sin. One living in sin cannot, and does not, 
experience healing through the power of Christ. 
Except ye become converted ye cannot be saved 
nor healed with the ministry of Christian Healing. 
Accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior and lover of 
our souls, we may approach Him in faith for what- 
ever we need. 


3. DISEASE A SOURCE OF SIN 


There is no fundamental antagonism between 
natural and spiritual law. Both are laws of nature. 


108 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


This comprehends all nature and nature’s God. 
Actions of the mind and soul are subject to natural 
law just as much as the swinging of the stars or 
_ the tides. 

Where one law is resisted, or disobeyed, other 
processes related to this law are counteracted and 
thrown out of place. For example, if a train is 
scheduled by law or order to run on a track at a 
certain time and does not do so, other engineers 
who run their locomotives, passengers, roadside 
deliveries and countless individuals are forced to 
abandon their schedule and routine. Not infre- 
quently serious damage is done by this engineer 
breaking the law, not only to himself and his own 
train and crew, but to others far remote from the 
travelers by the loss of life, property and employ- 
ment. Thus natural law disobeyed interferes with 
and affects many functions operated by spiritual 
law. Chemical and biological laws and processes 
upset and obstruct the functions of spiritual as well 
as mental phenomena. 

Disease, whether functional or organic, is in 
some instances a source of spiritual maladjustment. 
We combat evil spiritual effects by removing phys- 
ical and mental disease. Let us take} as an instance, 
the law of sympathy. That which is spiritual in 
us dictates we should care for those of tender years 
and for the aged and infirm. A diseased or unde- 
veloped, un-Christian and uncivilized mind de- 
plores the expense of energy and waste in prolong- 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 109 


ing the days of those unable to support or care for 
themselves. 

Let us contrast this c biological aspect of the case 
with our spiritual heritage in the Church. Why 
is it So many men, women and dollars are devoted 
to maintaining orphanages, asylums, homes for 
aged and those unfit to struggle against social and 
economic conditions? Natural law involves the 
survival of the fittest and a fight to the finish for 
existence. 

Now one type of diseased mind is that which is 
undeveloped, which is governed by the lower laws 
of brute psychology rather than the higher laws of 
nature, or we may say God. If we put our law of 
the survival of the fittest into practice rather than 
the law of sympathy or love, our hospitals would 
become death-houses in which to do away with the 
incurable, the defective, dependent and delinquent 
classes. The diseases of others would thereby cause 
us to commit sin. 

Mother-love motivates our social institutions for 
keeping alive the aged, the incurable. The preser- 
vation of this instinct is a mark of progressive 
civilization. In place of others’ troubles and dis- 
eases causing us to sin by committing murder, they 
bring out the expression of one of our most noble 
and altruistic impulses. If we deprecate mother- 
love, we eliminate an important factor in the pres- 
ervation of civilization. Christianity and the 
Churches emphasize the maternal instinct as one of 


110 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


the most precious assets of social growth. The 
Chinese, the Tibetans, Spartans and American In- 
dians have not distinguished themselves among 
races for their exposure of the young or killing of 
the diseased and aged. 

Regarded from a personal point of view, disease 
is a source of sin manifested in maladies which 
dishearten the afflicted and bring on morbid states. 

The Ministry of Healing performs therefore a 
vital function as well as becoming a spiritual recti- 
fier when it attacks disease. While I was writing 
this chapter a gentleman of wealth, position, cul- 
ture, a trustee of a Church, called to see me. He 
is quite deaf, due to a diseased condition of the 
Eustachian tubes. He exhibits, as so many deaf 
people do, a melancholia culminating in the depth 
of moral depravity and sin. This man remarked: 
“T can hear little, therefore I learn little news to 
talk about, so I might as well take poison and go 
west. I don’t see any use of living. Better people 
than I am kill themselves for this reason.” Any 
Christian will state that one who is a suicide dies 
in sin. Even the wish to die, contrary to God’s 
will, is sinful. Many other disorders of the body, 
such as acute rheumatism, physical defects, cancer 
and other slowly debilitating diseases, especially 
those of the brain and nervous system, create sin. 

The physician and the clergyman can codperate 
in restoring to the sick a moral poise and rehabili- 
tation in the realm of responsibility. There is a 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 111 


“don’t care’ attitude engendered by sickness which 
the Ministry of Healing as a function of the Church 
alleviates. New life purposes, ideals more easy of 
accomplishment, the thought that ‘‘Thou, God, 
seest me,” is made a moral and spiritual force. 

Another instance of disease as a source of sin, 
which may be removed by the Ministry of Christian 
Healing, is the sin of lust. Sexual immorality is 
at times dependent upon disease. We know that 
eighty per cent. of fallen women are feeble-minded. 
Among men sexual indulgence is increased by alco- 
holism. A few critics of our Christian code of 
ethics base their licentiousness on the ground they 
are acting according to their natural instincts. Low 
instincts these must be which allow them to commit 
fornication, rape and live unfaithful to their wives. 
There can be no permanent happiness, health and 
wholesome spirituality among those who would en- 
joy themselves by means of another’s degradation. 
These diseased minds lead others, as well as them- 
selves, into sin. 

Going back into the early history of the race, 
we find polygamous marriage the custom of society. 
Going back still further into evolutionary processes, 
we discover great quantities of offspring such as 
the innumerable spawn of the oyster and the cod. 
Here we have quantity to survive rather than qual- 
ity. But today the perpetuation of the species does 
not rest upon numbers so much as upon individual 
capacities and phylogenetic endowment. This is 


112 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


promoted by national, civil and family life, with 
their attendant institutions. When the Church 
properly relates the individual to these dominant 
factors in civilization, it does the most that can be 
done to eradicate the social evil. Christian Healing 
is a sociological asset in decreasing the sins of 
society by encouraging men and women to maintain 
social intercourse upon the highest ideals of civili- 
zation and religion. 

The life of Mary Magdalene affords us a striking 
example of disease being a source of sin, and its 
removal a motive for virtue. It was she out of 
whom seven devils were cast that showed such love 
for the Master in the anointing of His Head, the 
wiping of His Feet with the hairs of her head. It 
was she who with diligent love went to the sepulcher 
and was rewarded by being the first to behold Him 
in His resurrection body. 

An unforgiven sin, a hardened heart, is ofttimes 
an insuperable difficulty in the cure of a patient. 
A grudge, ill will, hatred, etc., fester in the mind as 
does an open sore in the flesh. Our Lord perceived 
the relation of disease to sin when He proclaimed: 
“For whether is easier to say, thy sins be forgiven 
thee; or to say, arise, take up thy bed and walk.” 
We would infer from this saying that Christ con- 
sidered it easier to cure the diseased than to cure 
the soul by the forgiveness of sin. Having healed 
the body first, it then became easier to heal the soul. 
Having instilled cheerfulness and hope in those who 


SPIRITUAL ASPECTS 113 


sought His ministry, Christ thereby approached 
their souls—the seat of their moral actions. Mod- 
ern medical science substantiates the value of the 
contribution of pleasing emotions in the recovery 
from sickness. Likewise, these mental and moral 
states carry on their beneficent therapy in the per- 
sonality of the afflicted. The most curative and 
morally potent of these is faith. 

Faith is dynamic. Spiritually we either advance 
or retreat. Piety never remains in equilibrium. 
The faith which figuratively can remove mountains 
of difficulties is sufficient to remove man from the 
desire to sin. One whose diseases are cured by faith 
will have such spiritual impetus that, if he is grate- 
ful to God, he will desire to please God in obeying 
His commandments. An adventurous spirit. will 
attempt greater feats of spiritual strength in living 
an altogether natural and wholesome life. This 
leads us to positive factors in combating the nega- 
tive attributes of sin through acquiring virtue. 


IV 


HEALTH AS AN AID TO CHARACTER 
FORMATION 


I. HEALTH AND FEELING WELL 


HEN one of the immigration officers at 

Ellis Island was looking at the line of 

new arrivals from one of the ships while 

they passed for inspection, he noticed one who had 
a decided squint in his eyes. This inspector was a 
doctor who was apt and clever in quick diagnosis. 
In this particular case he was not sure whether this 
man would prove to have a hernia or was disposed 
to criminality. When examined, it was found that 
the immigrant had a hernia, as the doctor had con- 
jectured from his facial appearance. Further in- 
vestigation showed no trace of crime, but that the 
man came of good stock and was highly regarded 
in the community from which he came. This is of 
interest to us in that it shows that certain types of 
diseases have their tell-tale symptoms upon the 
victims of ill-health in their physiognomy and 
speech and conduct. This may be illustrated in a 
hundred ways. An advanced pulmonary tuber- 
culosis patient has his inevitable characteristics of 
intermittent optimism and sadness. The deaf are 


114 


CHARACTER FORMATION 115 


prone to melancholia and irritability. The blind 
frequently radiate more cheer after their affliction 
visits them than when they had normal vision. One 
who has cancer, or other internal and incurable 
maladies, is frequently neurotic, living under ex- 
treme tension. Some types of heart disease develop 
or have a tendency to create psychoses; whereas a 
valvular lesion creates an indifferent, languid dis- 
position. The old axiom of “laugh and grow fat” 
is not altogether untrue in the hearty, jovial and 
self-satisfied attitude of those who are well nour- 
ished. 

As disease is accompanied by certain types of 
temperament prejudicial to growth in Christian 
character, so is health an aid to self-mastery in the 
direction desired by the individual. If he is living 
in a Christian atmosphere, is well and strong, self- 
controlled and the possessor of religious convictions 
akin to the Gospel, this man will be aided in his 
formation of Christian character through a healthy 
body. This is demonstrated by the scholastic 
standing, for example, of college students who per- 
form a certain required minimum of exercise in the 
University of Pennsylvania. They maintain a 
higher degree of physical and mental efficiency 
since compulsory physical examination and exer- 
cise was established. Since pleasurable exercise is 
included in this schedule, the percentage of those 
who have been expelled for misconduct has grown 
less. In other words, a healthy mind in a healthy 


116 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


body is conducive to better conduct, conformity to 
law and order. This is also demonstrable in the 
army camps among those taken from the draft. 
Improved health conditions created a marked dif- 
ference in the moral tone. This is especially note- 
worthy among the troops of the American Expedi- 
tionary Force in respect to the activities in the 
field. Where a man has his mind occupied with a 
great and lofty purpose, or is entirely taken up with 
the excitement of battle, it is surprising how strong 
and rugged he becomes. I was much impressed by 
this in the lives of several chaplains who had pre- 
viously led very sheltered lives. Before the war 
they complained of ills and aches and were more 
or less self-centered, and I may say selfish indi- 
viduals. But exposed to danger, living strictly and 
regularly, their health had a noticeable effect upon 
their whole characters. 

Again this can be illustrated in the type of work 
in which various individuals are engaged. The 
professional ball-player has a different character 
than the clerk at the office or the professor in his 
laboratory, and the outside policeman is decidedly 
different in character than the banker or the stock 
exchange broker or the instructor of the ’cello or 
violin. Taking it by and large, the outdoor man, 
or he who lives in training and is careful of his diet, 
exercise and other habits, is of different and more 
assertive and wholesome character and morals than 
the puny, emaciated and over-indulged man. Why? 


CHARACTER FORMATION 117 


For one reason, a pure blood supply has enriched 
his brain. His brain and nerves have been his 
servants, his aids and staff; whereas, in the other 
case, these physical and nervous attributes have 
militated against the proper functioning of soul and 
body. ‘They have become the obstacles and mas- 
ters instead of the agents of his personality. 

Now this applies very closely to the Ministry 
of Healing in the Church. If and when religion 
can create a healthy mind and body, this health is 
going to react upon the physical and spiritual man. 
For example, in a hospital a patient frequently is 
benefited by being removed to a ward where all the 
patients are getting well. Or if he is taken to a 
place of pleasant surroundings where he can be 
amused, entertained by congenial: company, there 
is a reaction upon the whole system. What friends, 
entertainment, sunshine, a hopeful atmosphere can 
do for a patient, religion can do in some cases where 
the patient is or becomes of a religious tempera- 
ment. Religion can do more with some patients 
and in some diseases than all of these curative 
agencies. I am free to admit that where there is 
no capacity or receptivity of religious influence on 
the part of the patient, no Christian Healing can 
or will take place. However, what all these other 
benefits can do are not comparable to inspiring 
hope and good cheer and expectant faith in the full 
and adequate way in which the soul’s sincere desire 
can perform in the presence and power of a per- 


118 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


sonality love above life itself. If that person be 
Jesus Christ, so much the better for the patient’s 
character and convalescence. How does it come 
about? 

Hope, optimism, good cheer, contentment cause 
a man to breathe deeper than when he is in a nerv- 
ous or depressed state. Deep breathing purifies 
the blood, clarifies the brain, creates better heart 
action. The phagocytes are increased, become 
more active and attack bacteria injurious to the 
system. The blood surging through every tissue, the 
vaso-motor reactions become more normal, poisons 
are eliminated, foods and medicines are better as- 
similated, a general tone of well-being results, and 
health, that most desired object of all in this world 
among the diseased, thrills the entire metabolism 
of the whole man. 

Christian Healing therefore is intimately related 
to character through health. But what is char- 
acter? Is it not that for which Jesus Christ estab- 
lished His Kingdom on earth to propagate in the 
lives of His disciples! Character is that by which 
we resist and overcome sin or lawlessness. If 
Christian Healing promotes health, and health pro- 
motes character, and character conquers sin, then 
it is the logical function of the Church’s ministry 
to use every God-given agency and command to 
heal the sick. “Lay hands on the sick and they 
shall recover” is a command coming from the Head 
of the Church, even Christ the Lord. Hence the 


CHARACTER FORMATION 119 


Church is combating sin, building up and saving 
souls in so far as it can attempt to make the Min- 
istry of Healing efficacious. 

Frequently we hear the remark from some pious 
person: “I feel better for going to church.” No 
doubt, in most cases, if he feels better he is better, 
both physically and morally. Let us examine the 
moral situation, as that is the primary consideration 
of our discussion—their feeling better in its effect 
upon conduct or sin and misconduct. It is not 
usually those who feel well, bright and happy, liv- 
ing purposeful lives, who are haled before the courts 
for breaking the laws. Those who are lawless— 
sinful—are those, generally speaking, who are 
morose, dissatisfied, out of tune with society and 
their God. Where the Church can bring to these 
disgruntled and darkened lives the light of Christ’s 
presence, the joys of redemption, the fellowship of 
right thinking companions, it does much to prevent 
these individuals from defeat of sinful whims or 
devilish ambitions. The ministry of healing then 
is seen to be wider in scope than restoring vigor 
to the listless or miraculous cures to the hopeless. 
In employing every rational and religious means 
for growth of character, a sound mind in a sound 
body, the Church is doing a vast ethical work of 
great spiritual potency. 


120 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


2. COMMON SENSE THERAPEUTICS 


There has been nothing said or implied in the 
foregoing parts of this book which would minimize 
the value of medicines and surgical treatments and 
other scientific methods. Even the most untrained 
observer knows these are helps, at times the only 
helps, which can restore health and life. If one’s 
lungs were filled with water in a drowning accident, 
we would not think it either Christian nor common 
sense to do nothing but ask all around to kneel 
down and pray. We should roll the suffocated per- 
son and employ such other expert first-aid as is 
recognized to be helpful. Or in a case of blood 
poisoning or the swallowing of poisons we would 
not ask the patient to undo all or any rules of 
common sense, but would apply such antiseptics 
and emetics and antidotes as are customarily rec- 
ognized to be beneficent. There is nothing what- 
soever in Christ’s words or the Gospel to dissuade 
us from this practice and readiness to meet emer- 
gencies. As Christians it is our duty to do all in 
our knowledge to undo the heavy burdens, to let 
the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke of 
disease. We are to deal our bread to the hungry, 
to treat him as we would want to be treated if it 
will restore life and health and comfort. Every 
consecrated man will use all the ingenuity and kind- 
ness he possesses to bring health and happiness to 
his fellow man. 


CHARACTER FORMATION 121 


In this lies the greatest foundation for character 
formation in Christian Healing. The Church 
members will so take to heart the afflictions of 
those who are ill that they will offer prayers to God 
that they themselves and others may use every 
beneficial remedy to assuage the pain of those they 
love and also of their enemies. A glimpse of what 
such common sense therapeutics will result in is 
briefly sketched by Isaiah (58:7-8): ‘“Then shall 
thy light break forth as the morning, and thine 
health shall spring forth speedily: and thy 
righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of 
the Lord shall be thy reward.” 

Christian Healing therefore has a reflexive bene- 
fit upon those who practice it in the Churches, 
for in so doing the joy of service, duties conscien- 
tiously carried out will reflect upon their own char- 
acters and the glory or character of God shall shine 
upon them for going out to minister (not to be 
ministered unto) in His name. For it is Christ 
who says: ‘Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the 
least of one of these my brethren ye have done 
it unto me.” (Matthew 25:40.) Therefore the 
use of common sense and common knowledge is the 
acme of Christian Healing, combined with faith and 
prayer. 

Religion has so long been thought of as some- 
thing for the elect, the already good, that it will be 
greatly popularized and the message of salvation 
spread abroad so soon as the populace knows that 


122 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


religion is quite as essential to humanity as is medi- 
cine, and indeed is itself a medicine to body and 
soul. Christian Healing is destined to put a joy 
into religion and to eliminate the Calvinistic fear 
of the devil as the chief motive for a holy life. It 
will make the Church more sympathetic to those 
who suffer, and those who toil. The healing pres- 
ence of God will become a matter of common 
knowledge and the practice of the presence of God 
common sense when it is known God desires the 
health and welfare of all his creatures. Men will 
tune-in their hearts to the still, small voice of con- 
science which will control their actions as expres- 
sive of great gratitude for God’s healing mercies 
and miracles. 

The modern world is rediscovering the pages of 
the Bible at Bethshean, fifty miles north of Jeru- 
salem, in the archeological research of Harvard 
and the University of Pennsylvania. So likewise 
are Bible reading Christians delving into their 
Testaments to see what they can get out of them 
for their own good. And this is one incomparable 
pearl of great price—health. There is not a word 
in the Bible to discourage the attainment of health 
by every moral means, and without morality as we 
have seen in the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah per- 
fect health is unobtainable. 

Health aids in character formation by its en- 
thusiasms for the joys of living. It makes life a 
pleasure plus a desire to give pleasure. It bal- 


CHARACTER FORMATION 123 


ances our faculties, it inspires the mind, bearing 
fruit in wholesome emotions—love, meekness, 
peace and temperance (in the Greek significance 
of that word) signifying a well-rounded use, and 
not abuse of our passions and appetites. 


3. MENTAL HYGIENE AND MORALS 


Man stands apart from lower animals by virtue 
of qualities of which zodlogy can take no account. 
How the part of man which is not body is linked 
to his body is through an extremely intimate rela- 
tionship of brain and body functions. So close 
and vital is the union that it is generally recognized 
that no study of psychology can explain the ulti- 
mate residuum of personality and the springs of 
action which motivate conduct. Materialists have 
endeavored to define spirit in terms of instinct as 
a property of the brain. Yet the spirit has not 
to the present time been conclusively linked to the 
brain so that we may say that both are a unity. 

Whatever the relationship between mind and 
body we are now cognizant that physical impulses 
have a tremendous bearing upon the part of our 
personality which is termed the spiritual, and that 
the unbalancing of the physical mechanisms and co- 
ordinations will mar the processes of the mental. 
A touch of toothache will incite grave irritability, 
while an impaired digestion causes certain forms 
of depression. 


124 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


Nor does this relationship cease with these re- 
actions. An impaired mental state will produce 
results on the physical organism; and much worry 
and trouble cause the whole structure to function 
very inadequately. In the January, 1925, issue 
of the magazine, Hygeia, a number of personal 
experiences are given indicating that mental status 
was greatly improved when the physical disabilities 
were removed. One of the incidents reported was 
that of a young girl who was the “Ugly Duckling” 
of the family. She felt keenly her ineptitude, which 
she probably exaggerated in common with persons 
of her temperament. She mastered her lessons 
with comparative ease, and finally obtained her 
license to teach. Her first assignment to a public 
School was some distance from her home. As she 
did not want to board with strangers, she decided 
to walk to and from school, a distance of five miles 
each way. ‘The result of the exercise, with cor- 
responding benefits, resulted in rebuilding her 
physique and emancipating her from the “Ugly 
Duckling” class into that of normalcy, and its at- 
tendant release from the periods of despondency 
into which she had formerly been carried. 

Correction of our physical machinery lies within 
the domain of the medical professions, we admit. 
We turn to physicians and surgeons for the recon- 
struction of dislocated or impaired organic struc- 
tures, the eradication of incipient disease and the 
rebuilding of the physique. It is quite generally 


CHARACTER FORMATION 125 


true, barring lesions of the brain, to say that where 
the anatomy is properly codrdinated and working 
smoothly, that the operations of our personality 
are harmonious. There are exceptions in cases of 
dementia, so acute in some instances as to render 
these sufferers as public wards. The physician 
can frequently discover physical abnormalities 
which cause this dementia; or it may be a prob- 
lem which resolves itself into a demand for the 
diagnosis of the psychoanalyst. In these matters 
the Ministry of Healing has no place nor desire to 
penetrate a field in which it has no exact knowledge 
nor expert diagnosticians. 

There is a striking difference between the Chris- 
tian Healer and the New Thought cult and the 
Christian Science practitioner. The Church, just 
as did Jesus Christ, admits there is disease. The 
modern healing cults above mentioned endeavor to 
remove organic trouble by insisting on a mental 
attitude which denies the very existence of the evil 
they seek to eliminate. There are cases where 
this process is the correct one in persons afflicted 
with hallucinations, but the process should be the 
prescription and not the universal theory. Vo- 
taries of faith healing not infrequently overstrain 
minds of their patients where the malady could be 
remedied by simple physical processes. As an in- 
stance, flatulence, haliostosis, biliousness and kin- 
dred dyspeptic and morose disturbances may be 
remedied in short order by a cathartic, whereas the 


126 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES. 


operation of faith upon the unconscious mind is a 
roundabout process. The Ministry of Healing in 
the Church does not minimize the importance of 
surgery and medicine. It begins its work often 
where the physician declares himself impotent to 
cope with the ravages of disease and no drugs or 
knife can allay them by any known means. 

It is in the field of behavior that healing by faith, 
suggestion, corrected neuroses and psychoses, that 
the psychoanalyst codperates and supplements the 
physician’s skill. Freud, Jung, Coué and others 
emphasize the imperative necessity of their pa- 
tients to exercise faith in the doctor. Without that 
confiding relationship more intimate than brother- 
hood, little can be accomplished. This cannot 
always be established among strangers. Therefore 
the Church has a function to perform and a potent 
opportunity in its impersonal, yet sympathetic re- 
lationship between patient and priest or pastor. 
The revelation of past experiences, especially those 
of sex and related thereto, and certain repressions 
and mental complexes can be made by religious 
temperaments to Jesus Christ, the one whom the 
Christian calls the physician of souls. If faith 
and imagination is so strong that one experiences 
the spiritual presence of Christ, the possessor of 
that faith has an intimate relation with the Christ 
of experience more vital and personal than any 
social or professional contacts in a psychoanalyst’s 
office. ‘The method of mental hygiene is to un- 


CHARACTER FORMATION 127 


bear the troubles, complexes and mental conflicts 
and, by staring them in the face, as it were, to ap- 
preciate their impotence over the life of a deter- 
mined purpose. Christian Healing can greatly aid 
the mental sufferer by facing these phantasies and 
sinful designs and moral twists in the “light of 
God’s own presence” so that the seeming powers 
of evil are driven away like the shadows of night 
before a rising sun. The psychoanalyst arrives , 
at the same end with resorting to faith in Christ 
as a means of arousing ethical motives and a back- 
ground for peaceable and beneficent character- 
istics. 

It is the conception of the psychoanalyst that 
crime (the social or legal aspect of sin) is the re- 
sult of disease. The probability is that many of 
the so-called criminals of society will be treated by 
psychoanalytic methods with a view to discovering 
what biological factors create criminal tendencies. 
The field of psychoanalytic treatment is limited. 
Kempf, in The Automatic Functions and the Per- 
sonality, mentions among derangements caused by 
repression of intense affections, loss of appetite, ir- 
ritability, nausea, cardiac palpitation, general hypo- 
chondriac complaints and enduring psychoneurotic 
derangements. In Principles of Mental Hygiene, 
White states: ‘The number and duration of physi- 
cal and apparently psychical disorders which may 
originate at the psychological level is endless.” 
The success of the treatment depends almost en- 


128 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


tirely upon the confidence which the subject feels 
in the analyst. If the patient fails to do his ut- 
most to help the analyst, and lay bare all the se- 
crets, the discovery of them will necessitate a more 
tedious method of procedure and much more time. 
Christian Healing is a direct approach of the pa- 
tient to One in whom he can place more faith than 
anyone if he believes Jesus Christ is the Son of 
God, the willing remover of all our infirmities. 
Christian Healing is of no use to a person who does 
not believe that. We have now seen the crux of 
the situation in these mental cases is faith in the 
treatment and physician. 

Revelations which can be made to a personal 
Savior are more intimate and analytical than those 
to any doctor or analyst. Therefore if self-analy- 
sis and self-revelation, combined with faith, are 
essentials in rebuilding character and combating 
and eradicating sin and crime we have in the con- 
fiding relationship of the confiding, believing Chris- 
tian in his Savior a source of moral strength and 
probity unsurpassed by any scientific method apart 
from revealed religion. 

Furthermore, the Churches, through their Min- 
istry of Healing, offer methods of constructive edu- 
cational ideas for mental hygiene and development. 
Courses of study in the Church open up prophy- 
lactic thought and activity and social relationship 
too often missing after one is discharged from the 
ward or the clinic. This is becoming more and 


CHARACTER FORMATION 129 


more apparent in the recreational and social fea- 
tures of modern parish house facilities. 

Mental hygiene of youth is stirring the deepest 
thought of those engaged in religious education. 
The task is now being fitted to the individual rather 
than the individual pupil to the task. The child’s 
ambition is to be grown up. That this ambition 
is the natural pathway for the urges is evident. 
The function of the Church is to meet the child and 
lead him on the way of self-expression. The 
Church gives the youth a share in the useful activi- 
ties of the adult world through Boy Scout, Knights 
of St. John, etc., Girls’ Friendly Society, Daugh- 
ters of the King clubs, etc., so that they realize a 
sufficient self-gratification to remove evil methods 
of self-expression such as “playing the man” by 
becoming intoxicated, plundering, banditry, sexual 
indulgences or other current crimes held up before 
them in the daily press as the things that men do 
when grown up. 

Hence the Ministry of Healing not only treats the 
patient and trains the youth in periods of crises, 
but is a convalescent home, so to speak, far on in 
the life of the one who is being developed to com- 
pare to the measure of the stature of the fullness 
of Christ. In psychoanalytic language, we shall 
first find out what our urges are, how they can be 
given adequate outlets, and how these expressions 
of character may be so coordinated to the individ- 
ual that he may freely act, unrestrained by evil in- 


130 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


fluences or sin, and thus avoid a neurotic condition, 
or a tainted disposition and soul, and express these 
urges without mental conflict in harmony with eth- 
ical standards and the customs of the Church and 
society. 


4. HEART TO HEART 


There is an intimacy which springs up between 
one who is ill and the person of him who would 
do all in his power to benefit him. The return to 
health is accompanied with a response of the affec- 
tions upon the part of the one recovering from sick- 
ness. These magnanimous feelings have their 
beneficent consequences upon the character of 
those who have been helped not infrequently. 
These personal attachments when elevated to com- 
panionship with the Christ become the highest in- 
centives to noble living. In many a long and weary 
illness, and, in fact, in others of short duration, 
the heart is so touched by deeds of kindness that 
it opens to the sweeter, holier influences of God’s 
grace. Some characters appear to be made more 
perfect through suffering. Others who are resent- 
ful are hardened, and themselves turn away from 
the things of the spirit. But in the case of those 
whose hearts are touched there is a pouring out of 
the heart to someone near and dear and usually to 
God. 

Man’s heart and affections are so constituted that 
like St. Augustine many a penitent finds himself 


CHARACTER FORMATION 131 


restless until he rests in Christ—until he knows 
that Christ knows all. In other words, there is a 
satisfaction gained by being able to fully express 
ourselves to one who can understand. Now this 
may be done informally as friend to friend, heart 
to heart, as I have said. Or it may be done for- 
mally in one way or another offered by the 
Churches with their varying forms and customs. 
Chief or most universal under this formal category 
is what the Church calls confession and absolution. 
During Healing Missions this method is employed 
by most all healing evangelists. The afflicted is 
asked to name or confess what is his complaint; 
what caused it, if he knows; how he has broken 
the laws of health, God’s laws. 

Now I am fully aware of the theological contro- 
versies which have been waged over this matter of 
sacramental or auricular confession. It is not my 
purpose here to present a brief either for or against 
this subject except to say that in Christian Heal- 
ing confession is of great benefit to the patient. 
In Churches where confession by the Missioner is 
held optional to those who want to use it, a vast 
majority afford themselves of the opportunity, and 
with markedly good results in the spiritual life of 
the local Church. . This is so because as never be- 
fore the sick have opened their hearts to Jesus. 
We are familiar with the work of Jung, Freud and 
Coué in this connection. Patients were largely 
benefited by this process of relieving themselves 


132 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


of the mental complexes which were dwarfing their 
spiritual energies in the psychoanalysts’ offices and 
Churches at Zurich, Vienna and Nancy. 

The office of these celebrated analysts partakes 
very largely of the nature of a confessional. Many 
family physicians’ offices do likewise. When doc- 
tors could do no more Dr. Jung told us in America 
through his interviews in the American Press, when 
he visited this country, January, 1925, that he 
acted the part of father-confessor to those who were 
in difficulty. Freud says practically the same thing 
in his lectures on the Unconscious Mind. Coué 
disclaims point blank any reliance upon religion 
or figure of speech regarding it in any way, shape 
or form in the Nancy School. Nevertheless, he 
also is taking the rédle of father-confessor to many 
hundreds of tortured humanity in his clinics. 
There is a freshness and jocularity there quite far 
removed from the somber recesses of the traditional 
confession box. Yet the point I wish to establish 
is that these patients see these unravelers of tan- 
gled minds and mental complexes to confess their 
deeds, dreams, wishes, actions, marital and social 
and sex relations even more freely than is done in 
the Churches. In this way their minds are unbur- 
dened, set at rest and, generally speaking, nor- 
malcy ensues. 

One of the standard books upon the religious 
phase is Mortimer’s Confession and Absolution 
(1902). I-see in it, and in the Old and New Tes- 


CHARACTER FORMATION 133 


taments, no place where auricular confession is com- 
pulsory. But I do observe in eighteen years’ life 
in the ministry that none of those who use confes- 
sion speak ill of it; and those who know less or 
nothing about it perpetually ridicule it. Ignorance 
again is bliss and causes many a stupid laugh about 
so holy a thing as opening one’s heart to Jesus 
Christ. 

Because people want to be well they wish to tell 
the greatest quantity of symptoms and thereby re- 
celve sympathy. In my own ministry I do not 
practice the hearing of confessions; rather would 
I have the penitent open his or her heart to Christ 
in private prayer. Yet should such case arise that 
one could not quiet his conscience in this way, and 
needs the advice of a pastor or priest, I have seen 
the need of heart to heart talks in the sight of God 
and consciousness of His presence. I mention this 
because of the close relationship between Chris- 
tian Healing and Christ’s work in coming to this 
world to forgive sin. To combat sin we are to use 
the teaching which our Savior gave us. In the 
sixteenth chapter of Matthew, verse nineteen, we 
are very definitely shown that Christ left power in 
His Church to forgive sin: ‘‘Whatsoever thou shall 
loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” This 
has no other signification than that of sin. It is 
not metaphor nor parable. As Dr. Schofield says 
in his Reference Bible Commentary footnote, page 
1022: “A key is a badge of power or authority.” 


134 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


It has no symbolic meaning as to opening doors of 
opportunity on the day of Pentecost or any other 
day. In the time of the lives of the Apostles, who 
had been face to face with Christ, the sacrament of 
penance was established and no adult was baptized 
until he had been absolved, nor was any convert 
admitted to the Holy Communion from the second 
to the fifteenth centuries without conforming to 
this sacrament. Peter claimed no more right to 
this power of the keys than the other Apostles. 
For they all possessed it, as is well recognized by 
the Roman, Anglican, Coptic, Greek and Gallic 
and American ordinals. 

The manner of doing this is open to question, 
and practices in the various Churches change from 
age to age. That confession was universally used 
in the Early Church we may learn from the Epistle 
of James, fifth chapter: “Confess your faults one 
to another.” But note this is not auricular con- 
fession—the stumbling block of so many Protes- 
tants, far from it! If we did confess our faults 
one to another, did not bluff and conceal, but all 
Christians went to Church as in James’ day and 
there in open meeting told of their sins, it would 
do much to elevate the tone of health and morals 
of our modern communities. 

Where the Church is asked to exercise the Min- 
istry of Healing upon those who need it, the one 
who visits, lays hands on the sick, or anoints has 
a unique opportunity to minister to the soul and 


CHARACTER FORMATION 135 


thereby to the character of the patient. From the 
principles of psychoanalysis we know there will be 
no psychical cures take place except through the 
unconscious mind, the seat of the soul. It is one 
of the strong points in Christ’s ministry that the 
soul was made right before bodily healing was evi- 
denced. First the soul must be cured, saved, then 
in God’s good time, maybe gradually, the bodily 
health will be restored. Without faith, as we have 
previously seen, Christ could do no signs and won- 
ders. Therefore all adjuncts to curing of the soul 
should precede any effects of Christian Healing. 
“Thy sins be forgiven thee” is repeatedly on the 
lips of our Lord in connection with faith-cures. 
What He did He tells us to do. The way we do 
it is open to our own individuality or Church; but 
to be effective clergy and pastors we are to gather 
in those that are lost by what right means are at 
our disposal. Absolution is one, the Ministry of 
Healing is another, and they are closely related in 
that they jointly conserve body and soul. 
Absolution, in most Protestant Churches, as well 
as in Roman Catholic, has reached a set phraseol- 
ogy and we hear it read or repeated in many de- 
nominations in a perfunctory manner. Whatever 
its ritual or terminology, the essence of Christ’s 
words or message is still contained in the prayer or 
proclamation. Now when this is said to a large 
audience no one objects; but reduce it to a strictly 
private matter and we hear asked on all sides; 


186 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


“How can a man forgive sins against God?” Per- 
sonally I have never heard of any man who ever 
tried to do so. But by the authority committed 
unto him, or in the name, or for the sake of Jesus 
Christ, we pray that God may have mercy and 
pardon on the souls who have sinned. No matter 
what our office or honor in the Christian Church 
we can all beseech our Heavenly Father for for- 
giveness and absolution upon ourselves and others. 
Furthermore, through true repentance, the gospels 
proclaim the glad tidings, we may be assured of 
forgiveness with triumphant certainty. 


Knowing that our sins are washed away by the 
atoning blood of Jesus Christ, being assured of this 
absolution (washing away), it is going to bring 
joy, health and new life to those who hear it. This 
has been the turning point in many who repented, 
were saved, healed and walk in the light of Jesus’ 
presence, “redeemed, restored, forgiven by Jesus’ 
precious blood.” Hence absolution has its effect 
upon the soul, the soul upon health, and, as we 
have seen, the health upon character, and stability 
of character continues to conquer sin. 


5. THE TYRANNY OF THE PAST 


Psychoanalysis is either a raking up of the past 
according to the principles of Freud, or it is a 
presentation of present hardships and perplexities 


CHARACTER FORMATION 137 


as per the school of Vienna led by Jung. In either 
method the psychoanalyst delves into the inmost 
secrets of the heart. Experiences or wishes are 
brought to light and true knowledge; in the light 
their terrors are done away; their inhibitions and 
complexes are minimized. The tyranny of the past 
is overcome by a fundamental psychological adapt- 
ing of the mind to reality as we know it. Emo- 
tions are given vent. For checked emotions like 
superheated steam will cause disastrous wreckage. 
Presenting a suppressed emotion to one’s mind in 
its true value lets off steam. Desires and longings 
or fears of which we are not fully conscious but 
seem to link us to the past, or are left over feel- 
ings of previous experiences from which we cannot 
rid ourselves, entangle and stifle our will-power. 
Let these be related openly and knowingly to con- 
sciousness and they pass away as does darkness in 
the light. A A psychoanalyst heals by allowing the 
patient to give vent to their ‘suppressed emotions. 

‘In Christian ‘Healing the priest or minister takes ‘ 
the place of the psychoanalyst. By. revealing 
complexes in a heart to heart talk or formal con- 
fession the patient’s ‘peace of mind is restored. 
Thus the tyranny of the past is removed, an ave- 
nue of escape from dwelling on the past and being 
ruled by it is provided. Jesus Christ left in His 
Church a means of cure similar to the principles 
of modern psychoanalysis in the commission: 
“Heal the sick”; “Those whose sins ye remit they 


138 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


are remitted unto them.” ‘Those who have never 
experienced the linking of the interest of God with 
their past and their desire to make good in this 
life invariably ridicule the idea of forgiveness of 
sin or the instrumentality of any man in their 
starting life afresh. These persons repel and re- 
press their instincts, but they cannot thereby con- 
trol them. A full confession to God completely 
brings up a mental complex. A surgeon sometimes 
allows a foreign element like a bullet to become 
encapsulated when he cannot extract it. But this 
may cause trouble in later life. Likewise one be- 
comes neurasthenic when complexes are retained 
in the mind and kindred ills and evil actions follow. 

Christian Healing recognizes the scientific value 
of psychoanalysis in the clarification of the mind. 
It gives the patient self-control by use of all his 
instincts in channels and directions toward self- 
realization. To be specific let us illustrate the 
teaching of Christ in this connection: “looking on a 
woman to lust after her.” Here, by the way, 
Christ used the Greek word—gunaika—signifying 
a married woman. The passage shows Christ was 
concerned with intention. We know that evil 
thoughts of all descriptions enter all our minds. 
Moral life in Christianity concerns itself with in- 
tentions. The acceptance of this fact, these in- 
stincts, in the light of God’s own presence enables 
us to face all moral issues bravely and not to fear 
we shall be overcome and thus weaken the will, 


CHARACTER FORMATION 139 


Things which are not seen in their right perspec- 
tive take on phantastic and erroneous dimensions. 
A mind which cannot look upon obscene or evil 
deeds in their relation to an all wise God is per- 
verted and needs cure by a right relationship with 
God. This right relationship can be obtained 
where it is otherwise lacking by the inculcation of 
the principles and influence of Jesus through the 
ministry of Christian Healing. Christ inspires 
psychological expression and contradicts the nega- 
tion of suppressed emotions tyrannizing our past, 
present and future. By psychological and Chris- 
tian expression we can standardize our emotions 
and mental complexes to our ideals. In this way 
we will not give filthy or brutal expression to our 
desires no matter how natural and right they may 
be. If procuring wealth is my strongest ambition 
I shall not give expression to it in such a way as 
to steal, lie or cheat for this would not be con- 
structive to a happy or Christian state of mind. 
One who experiences Christian Healing admits 
his past but does not let it drag him backward nor 
hold him fast as he aspires to the stature of the 
fullness of Christ. But one who permits the 
tyranny of the past to dominate his life reveals 
this overmastery in conduct, in physical actions, 
moral distortions or in dreams. Actions speak 
louder than words. For example, a nervous 
woman called upon her physician and was asked 
if the relations with her husband were entirely sat- 


140 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


isfactory. She professed they were. Little hap- 
penings showed this to be untrue. She was late at 
the appointment with her husband in the doctor’s 
office, after a day’s absence from her husband, 
where they were both to meet. She dreamed some 
harm had come to him—revealing her inmost de- 
sire,—she had a habit of removing her wedding 
ring, and lastly professed her devotion most ar- 
dently at quite unnecessary intervals. The truth 
was she was enamored of another man, and this 
was the cause of her neurosis. 

The value of Christian Healing above the psy- 
choanalytic past I should say is that there is no 
possibility of bluff before the presence of Almighty 
God. If we went to a Freudian physician we 
would be led to trace our sickness or our evil hearts 
to some near or remote sex experience. Or if a 
Jungian physician attends us all our horrible men- 
tal images or morbid traits would rise before us. 
Or if a Coué disciple took hold of us we would 
dwell upon the optimistic resources in our posses- 
sion. In any case no man knows us through and 
through as does He who shall disclose the secrets 
of all hearts. 

Before the Christ we can unbear our souls as 
before no physician under heaven. Having un- 
covered them, the ills and evils of our souls need 
no longer to be repressed. ‘The instincts can then 
come into use in their entirety to the completion 
and perfection of a well-rounded character. It 


CHARACTER FORMATION 141 


may be observed also that the accredited psycholo- 
gist and psychoanalyst use no drugs, hypnotism 
nor any other technique other than sympathetic 
inquiry into the mental and moral experience of the 
patient. ‘Therefore the skillful and tactful minis- 
try of Christian Healing is even better prepared to 
lend spiritual counsel, private interviews without 
fee and without price. It further unifies the mind 
and produces harmonious actions by centering the 
self about the ever-present Christ in a mystical 
relationship which psychoanalysis does not do. 
Christian Healing gives ideals, purpose, stability 
to moral living together with association with right- 
living people, or those who endeavor to keep God’s 
law; whereas the psychoanalyst is egocentric in 
his method, introspective and offers nothing more 
than crudest nature in a struggle for an escape from 
the past and for existence. 


6. GOD OUR SUPPLY 


Prayers for healing from the ancient liturgies 
and other offices of the Church reveal that in the 
first few centuries the Lord’s Supper was consid- 
ered as a supply of life-giving power. It was to 
the Early Christians the central and most frequent 
act of worship in their public gatherings. 

The Leonine Sacramentary says: ‘May these 
mysteries, we beseech Thee, O, Lord our God, con- 
fer upon us that inward and outward health which 


142 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


shall assist Thy servants to live according to Thy 
will, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” 

In The Sarum Missal I find: “We beseech 
Thee, Almighty God, mercifully to behold this our 
sacrifice and devotion, and of Thy goodness grant 
us thereby health of mind and body. Amen.” 

“Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, unto Thy 
servant health of mind and body by this Holy 
Sacrament which HE has received; and fill nis 
heart with everlasting consolations, that being up- 
held by divine protection, HE may please Thee with 
holy devotion, and ever obtain a part in the bene- 
fits which Thou bestowest. Amen.” 

“We that are refreshed by Thy heavenly bene- 
diction beseech Thee, O Lord, that the healing 
power of Thy Sacrament may be profitable to both 
our bodies and souls through Jesus Christ. Amen.” 

In the ninth century A.D., we have: “O Holy 
Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting God, we en- 
treat Thee in faith that our [brother-sister], re- 
ceiving the most holy body and blood of Thy Son 
our Lord Jesus Christ, may enjoy health both in 
body and soul, through the same our Lord. 
Amen.” 

Prayers of thanksgiving for recovering from 
sickness occur in the earliest liturgies but are few 
in number. But these pioneers of faith-healing 
and of a science altogether Christian have left us 
spiritual treasures in their formal devotions. These 
teach that if health is granted to us we should 


CHARACTER FORMATION 143 


use the new vigor thus given in a most consecrated 
manner for the good of Him who has so had mercy 
upon us. We should the more earnestly perse- 
vere with new health and strength to be absolutely 
unselfish, not using our bodies for ease and-pleas- 
ure when there is work to do for the Master. This 
vitality is given to us to devote it generously to 
Him who bestows it for the advance of His plea 
for right living and good will among men. 

The Gelasian Sacramentary says: “O God, in 
Whose hand are the issues of life and death, Who 
of Thy great mercy didst raise up Thy servant 
Hezekiah when sick unto death, we thank Thee that 
Thou hast restored this our Brother from the gates 
of death; and we beseech Thee that he may dedi- 
cate the life Thou has preserved to Thy service, 
and finally be found worthy to enter that happy 
abode where sickness and death never come, 
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” 

In the office of Visitation of the Sick in the An- 
glican Prayer Book there is one prayer, and one 
only, which would inject any hope of recovery, 
faith or virtue in the person who is diseased. In 
the same book of Common Prayer in the following 
service called The Communion of the Sick there 
is no reference or regard for the Holy Communion 
as an instrument of health or healing. Nowadays, 
the prayers and parts of the Visitation of the Sick 
are scarcely ever used in the Church of England or 
the Episcopal Church in the United States on ac- 


14:4 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


count of their dismal and hopeless character, com- 
bined with a most displeasing accusation of sin. 

We have dealt with the subject of Penance under 
the headings of Confession and Absolution. It 
presents itself in The Communion of the Sick in 
the following form: ‘Here shall the sick person 
be moved to make a special confession of his sins 
if he feels his conscience troubled with any weighty 
matter.” After this confession, which is recom- 
mended but not held obligatory before Communion, 
the priest shall absolve him (if he humbly and 
heartily desire it) after this sort: 

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, Who hath left power 
in His Church to absolve all sinners who truly re- 
pent and believe in Him, of His great mercy for- 
give thee thine offenses: and by His authority com- 
mitted to me, I absolve thee from all thy sins, in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the 
Holy Ghost. Amen.” 

This was placed in the Prayer Book of the 
Church of England in this form in 1061 but is not 
retained in the American edition for the so-called 
American Church (Protestant Episcopal). This is 
mentioned in this connection to uphold our line of 
argument that the early prayers for the sick con- 
cern themselves with the moral behavior of the af- 
flicted. 

Because the office of Visitation of the Sick so 
logically precedes their communion I insert this 
reference to absolution of the sick in connection 


CHARACTER FORMATION 145 


with their receiving of the sacrament. It will be 
observed by the parenthesis that private confession 
is neither enjoined nor compulsory upon the sick, 
nor indeed upon any others in this old document. 
In collecting a few of these ancient prayers which 
were used for the sick, and at the time or preced- 
ing the reception of the Holy Communion, we see 
reason for the belief of the Church in the efficacy 
of the Lord’s Supper as a source of bodily and spir- 
itual refreshment. 

It is universally accepted among all Christians 
that Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper. This 
has brought about the doctrine of the Real Pres- 
ence. Dr. W. P. Du Bose in his Soteriology of the 
New Testament (page 382) is clear on this point: 
“The real presence is only a part of the general 
reality and actuality of Christ in Christianity. It 
is a part of the general system of objective grace, 
without which there would be no subjective faith 
or life of Christ in the world. If there is nothing 
outward from God to be received, there can be no 
real inward reception on our part.” 

The Doctrine of the Real Presence, by Pusey, 
is the most scholarly treatment of this subject. 
From Darwell Stone’s Christian Dogma we may 
learn (page 178) just what the immediate and most 
conspicuous followers and scholars of our Savior 
understood was the effect of the word of consecra- 
tion in the Eucharist. Ignatius refers to the Eu- 
charist as the flesh of our Savior, Jesus Christ— 


146 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


Ad Smyrna, 6. Iranzus asserts our Lord acknowl- 
edged the bread to be His body, and established 
the mixed cup as His blood.—Concerning Heresies, 
IV. Augustine says practically the same thing, only 
more emphatically—Sermon, 1:10. Chrysostom 
speaks of touching the flesh of Christ with the 
tongue—Homily, 27:5. These teachers are of un- 
deniable authority from various sections of the 
Early Church, and together are typical of earliest 
Christian dogma and tradition. In contradiction 
of the denial of this doctrine of the real presence of 
Christ in the Communion we have such controver- 
sialists as Justin Martyr, Cyprian and Tertullian, . 
Basil and the practice of Christians for twenty 
centuries. , 
The Real Presence of Jesus Christ finds us, 
therefore, in the Lord’s Supper at a place beyond 
which no human guide can take us and leads us 
forward into the presence of God. In this sacra- 
ment we come in contact with the personality, than 
whom there is none greater. In a letter to The 
Churchman Professor Samuel McComb states re- 
specting Dr. Douglas’ Spiritual Healing and the 
Holy Communion: ‘He has grasped the funda- 
mental fact that all real healing must be in per- 
sonality. A disordered personality can be cured 
of its disorder only by a personality that is the 
essence of health and order and peace.” ‘This tract, 
which I mention, is a personal testimony receiving 
the endorsement of such eminent clergymen as Dr. 


CHARACTER FORMATION 147 


Ernest M. Stires, Rev. J. W. Sutton, Dr. W. H. 
Owen, Bishops Slattery, Stearly, Lines, Burgess 
and Nichols, besides the editor of The Living 
Church and numerous physicians of high standing. 
The point the author establishes is the necessity 
of personal guidance outside ourselves. This lead- 
ership is taken up in mature life by the sacred 
person of Christ and carries us in sweet compan- 
ionship to heights which parents, friends and phy- 
Sicians cannot attain for us. Christ lays hold of 
our inmost selves and performs His healing work 
through soul contacts and guidance. 

The Real Presence is effective through our spir- 
itual imagination centered in the visible reality of 
the memorial ordained by Christ upon the eve of 
His crucifixion. A past event would be useful in 
its power of auto-suggestion. But the Eucharist 
offers in the presence of Jesus Christ a direct sug- 
gestion, to him who attends it, with any imagina- 
tion or power to will. Since Christ is present In 
this feast of love He can cure us and heal us. The 
application follows in mental healing. We first 
relax our sinful selves in the presence of Him who 
loves us and gives Himself for us. ‘Thereupon we 
accept His guidance, His promises and His abiding 
generalship. We unite our wills in mystical union 
with the central power of healing and good will of 
the universe, and become attuned to the purposes 
of God in mind and body. 

How we behave in the audience of different per- 


148 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


sonages is illustrative of how differently we conduct 
ourselves in the sight and hearing of the Healer 
and Redeemer of mankind. That a man holds 
himself differently on the ball field and in the ball- 
room, in the company of a dear comrade or in the 
conference room of the head of the concern is 
_ obvious to all. That a group of worshipers con- 
duct themselves more reverently at the time of the 
Holy Communion is quite noticeable to the Min- 
ister or Celebrant. The entrance of one person 
into a congregation frequently alters and uplifts 
the whole spiritual atmosphere of the entire group. 
The prayers, sermon and singing take on a unique 
tone depending upon the personalities of the hear- 
ers and supporters of the Church. Perhaps it 
should not be so; but the one in charge of the 
service cannot but feel the presence of those be- 
fore them and respond to it. I have observed this 
occur in the choir as well when a visiting preacher 
is with us even before he says a word. His bear- 
ing, his demeanor radiates influences in the very 
tone and quality of the singing. This was im- 
pressed upon me very vividly when our Colonel, 
John G. Parker, whose moral force was superb, 
sometimes unexpectedly dropped into the canteen 
of the barracks. Work was done in a more sol- 
dierly manner and the tone of the conversation was 
elevated, the disgruntled became quite cheery and 
optimistic, and the sick lost their languid appear- 
ance. Such is the power of personality to raise 


CHARACTER FORMATION 149 


one above our surroundings. To infinite degrees 
in comparison is the power of the Presence of the 
Personality of Jesus Christ to heal and to restore 
the will and the imagination, the good behavior 
and morale of His disciples, when in the audience 
of Him who says: ‘Take, eat; do this in remem- 
brance of Me. This is My body and this is My 
blood.” 

The Holy Communion is a God-given supply 
and factor in Christian Healing. This supper and 
command of our Lord is overlooked by Christian 
Science. Most Christian bodies pass it by as a 
healing ordinance. (Refer to the sixth chapter of 
the Gospel according to John, fiftieth to fifty- 
eighth verses). Here Christ plainly declares the 
potency of the spiritualized flesh to maintain tem- 
poral and eternal life. 

The Jews asked: How could Christ give His 
flesh to be eaten? Jesus said “Except ye eat of 
the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, 
ye have no life in you.” Without life, of course, 
there is no health present or available. 

Already we have mentioned the words spoken 
to a communicant when receiving the Body and 
Blood of Christ at the altar in the ritual of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church, the Methodist 
Church and others which use this phraseology. In 
a booklet endorsed by the Rev. A. J. G. Banks 
(to whom I owe so much), entitled Come Unto Me, 
the wording of the Communion Office, as well as 


150 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


the more helpful communion hymns, is analyzed 
with reference to the healing value of the Holy 
Communion. Upon close examination one will 
find at least a dozen allusions, prayers and Scrip- 
tural statements, besides the daily Gospels and 
Epistles with their frequent healing narratives, to 
the supply of health available in the reception of 
the Holy Communion. E. L. House, How to Heal 
One’s Self and Others, published by the Revell Co., 
page 37, treats this more scholarly but less poet- 
ically. He sums up the matter: ‘All is on the 
Lord’s Table.” 

But this little treatise, by Ethel Tulloch—good 
as it is, is limited in its scope to the one Church, 
or liturgy, to which the author belongs, and is 
therefore quite unsatisfactory in its claim upon the 
rank and file of Christians. A broader claim: to 
the efficacy of the blessed sacrament may be based 
upon what our Lord meant when He says (54): 
‘“‘Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, 
hath eternal life.” Now, we know from other pas- 
sages of Scripture that no persistent evildoer has 
eternal life. In other words, the Communion is 
in the Church for the giving to its members eternal 
life in place of the life in sins. Furthermore, we 
who partake of this flesh dwell in Christ and He 
inus. This might at first appear the acme of mys- 
ticism, and it is such. Yet at the same time this 
sacrament (as do all sacraments) conveys a tan- 
gible and visible evidence of the healing power of 


CHARACTER FORMATION 151 


Christ through material as well as spiritual union 
with Him. “He that eateth of this bread shall 
live forever’ (verse fifty-eight) furnishes the idea 
of health in its contrast to the statement to the 
former food from heaven—the manna in the wil- 
derness. Those who ate it are dead. Those who 
partake of the Body of Christ live eternally, live 
better, wholesome lives. 

The practical question then may be raised as 
to the invitation of all people to the altar, or the 
distribution of the blessed bread to the people in 
the pews, and the wine (fermented or otherwise) 
for the express purpose of healing. Someone might 
ask: If I go to the Holy Communion will I get 
well? We cannot answer yes or no. But we may 
quote our Savior in this regard: “According to 
thy faith so be it unto you.” 

Just how the Holy Communion becomes an 
agency of divine healing is through faith. By 
faith in the flesh and blood of Christ as integral 
portions of our flesh, like the meat and drink from 
the table, are we infused with the buoyant per- 
sonality of the ever-living Christ. Speaking by 
way of scientific criticism, some will observe that 
some communicants are ill and other non-communi- 
cants are exceedingly healthy. ‘Therefore we note 
the Holy Communion is not a talisman to keep off 
disease nor a hospice from which the unclean are 
excluded. In the more spiritual crises of life it is 
easier to present illustrations of the revivifying 


152 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


effects of the Holy Communion. When the troops 
were about to leave the shelter of Base No. 3, I gave 
them Communion. For some it was, and they 
knew it would be, their last. But it gave them 
new and high resolve to offer their lives a living 
sacrifice for the holy, righteous cause for which 
America entered the conflict. They went forth to 
their new assignments on the Front with a Christian 
courage and endurance fired and fused in the warm 
glow of Christ’s inner presence. Not one flinched, 
no one turned back. In the prisons I met those 
who, without the aid of religion and the most sacred 
manifestation of it in the Body and Blood of Christ, 
were cowards, traitors, broken lives, condemned in 
the sight of God and men. ‘These illustrations per- 
haps allude too sparingly to health, the subject we 
wish to emphasize. There can be no health of 
mind or body where courage to face life bravely has 
vanished. 

In the quiet chamber of those who are ending 
their aged careers I frequently administer the Holy 
Communion to those who are heir to all the ills of 
flesh and must shortly or eventually tread that path 
along which no wayfarer returns. Has the Holy 
Communion aided them physically as well as spir- 
itually? Yes, the physicians say it has. Before 
surgical operations I have administered the Holy 
Communion and it has alleviated the ether shock 
and other accompanying effects of severe crises. 

One notable case I have in mind is that of one 


CHARACTER FORMATION 153 


of our members who had her legs cut off inch by 
inch time after time in her protracted illness with 
diabetes. The only thing which gave her, or held 
her life in her, in these most harrowing and dead- 
ening adventures toward death was her realistic 
grip on Christ in the Communion. At such times 
one is not poetic or imaginative. The surgeons 
said any other person would have died a year be- 
fore. Humanely speaking it would have been bet- 
ter that she had been released from her suffering 
and lingering torture. But in this evidence of the 
life-giving power of the flesh of the Son of man 
we have an assurance that those among us, not af- 
flicted with what medical science now terms an 
incurable disease, can be sustained in physical effi- 
ciency, health and vigor by worthy participation 
in the Holy Communion. Verse fifty: ‘‘This is 
the bread which cometh down from heaven, that 
aman may eat thereof and not die.” 

The worthy reception of the Holy Communion 
is the highest standard of morality known to man. 
It at once links us to life in and for Jesus Christ, 
than whom there is no higher authority for human 
conduct. We are aware of the effects of various 
emotions and conduct upon our physical organisms. 
Adherence to idealistic principles of peace and hap- 
piness, good will and brotherly love such as the 
Holy Communion means and imparts has its related 
effect upon the emotions of communicants. If the 
seat of faith-cures is in the emotions, or the will, 


154 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


or the imagination, in one, or as I believe in all, 
we here have in this sacrament a supply from our 
Heavenly Father of influences which touch ever 
so intimately these through faculties of the uncon- 
scious mind by means of which the soul is aroused 
to benefit the body, reviving physiological proc- 
esses and vaso-motor functions, which in turn 
reach every tissue of the anatomy. 

One of the lessons modern welfare work and 
sociology is teaching us is that we have a right to 
be free from the disease of poverty. Poverty is 
the mother of sin and sickness. Men and women 
are tempted to barter their honor and virtue to 
escape poverty. The Bible reveals the fact that 
poverty is largely the consequence of wrong think- 
ing. There is a way out of it, namely, harmony 
to the laws of God where this right following of di- 
vine precepts may be had. Let us quote a few 
passages from the wealthy King Solomon in his 
Proverbs to illustrate that God is our supply. 
“That I may cause those that love me to inherit 
substance; and I will fill their treasures.” “By 
humility and fear of the Lord are riches, and honor, 
and life.” 

As we have said, poverty is one of the causes of 
crime; but this is very largely due to ill health, 
incapacity to labor and compete and codperate with 
one’s fellows. It is not our province here to enter 
into a discussion of all the causes of poverty. But 
if sickness, physical or mental, is one chief cause, 


CHARACTER FORMATION 155 


then by removing that we are eradicating one of 
the factors and foundations of sin. 

Jane Addams is one of the leading authorities 
in this field, and she declares that drunkenness is 
all too frequently the effect of poverty. How easy 
it is for a man to lose the sense of his own unworthi- 
ness, unfitness and inferiority by over indulgence 
in some opiate. Poverty has driven so many to 
degradation, and that in consequence of poor di- 
gestions, physical weakness, mental dullness and 
other physical lack. To combat sin we must fight 
against poverty, especially a poverty of vitality. 
When we come to the source of life and to Him 
who came to give us more abundant life (John 
10:10), we are tapping the wells of salvation from 
sins. Jesus did not recommend poverty for the 
masses. He suggested to one rich man that he 
might uplift the masses by selling what he had and 
giving to the poor. Christ knew that man loved 
money for its own sake rather than the good he 
could do with it. 

Life is an attribute of God. All that makes life 
enjoyable and successful is our Heavenly Father’s 
good pleasure to bestow upon those who recognize 
His Kingdom. Sin is that which ultimately de- 
stroys life,—always negative. 

Milton defines ‘‘sin as that which is impotent and 
powerless, ungoverned appetite, that which disfig- 
ures our likeness to God and destroys everything 
but itself.” Therefore, whatever will promote life 


156 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


and self-realized-living will be antagonistic to sin. 
Hence a godly, righteous life being the product of 
a healthy frame and constitution, and supplied by 
God, is a strategic attack upon evil within and with- 
out the individual. Social health enhances social 
purity and fortifies the commonwealth against the 
sins of society. 

It is our purpose to show, by way of summary, 
that God is capable and willing to supply all our 
needs, to give that vital urge, to fortify our health 
and will to prevent us from being overcome of evil, 
but to overcome evil with good. Where God, 
through the Ministry of Healing, has effected a 
more intelligent consciousness of His ability to 
supply all our needs we shall come to a keener 
perception that sin also is a disease. He who can 
supply all that is necessary for the elimination of 
diseases can, through forgiveness, create such heal- 
ing influences that the broken and contrite heart 
will achieve spiritual reform. 

The vast majority of our population who take 
no responsibility in the conquest of sin, and will 
not be organized against the organized forces of 
evil, have a very vague conception of sin. When 
they are aware of it they take it not into considera- 
tion in so far as it does not disturb their peace, 
health or property. It would be well if we could 
disseminate the definition of the meaning of sin 
given by Sir Oliver Lodge in his book, Substance 
of Faith, chapter eight. “Sin is the deliberate and 


CHARACTER FORMATION 157 


willful act of a free agent who sees the better and 
chooses the worse, and thereby acts injuriously to 
himself and others. The root sin is selfishness, 
whereby needless trouble and pain are inflicted on 
others; when fully developed it involves moral 
suicide.” 

The foregoing chapters have shown the potency 
of Christian Healing against what Lodge so well 
defines. But it must not be supposed, as some 
modern health cults propose, that health is the 
only factor, nor indeed is it the chief factor, in 
overcoming evil. Simply making a man well will 
not make him sinless, nor eradicating social evils 
will not eliminate criminality. But given a strong 
body and forceful, upright character, we shall have 
two of the fittest foes to lead the onslaught against 
oppression, lust and crime and every other symp- 
tom of sin. 

We have said sin kills. Therefore that which 
aids the struggle for existence is damaging to sin. 
Achievement is that overpowering instinct which 
in turn irradiates happiness. Ill health tends to 
direct one’s thought inward to unhappiness, to the 
centers of pain; thereby it promotes a self-centered 
existence and selfishness. On the other hand, 
Christian Healing inculcates an outward, upward 
look, a tendency to the culture of our higher fac- 
ulties by means of causing us to think less of self, 
making us free to educate those qualities of mind 
which appreciate and foster the good, the beautiful 


158 HEALING IN THE CHURCHES 


and the true. Thus we are freed from mere ani- 
mal existence to become associated with those 
things representative of a higher existence and of 
the faculties of divinity, namely art, science, 
philosophy, religion and creative improvement. 
The best adapted to survive, and the noblest char- 
acters of those who have been on earth leave an 
historic heritage and incentive of what we may ‘ 
some day become. Not groveling in infirmities and 
sin, but living unselfish lives, developing the high- 
est faculties in us, harmoniously evolving God’s 
purpose for ourselves, and not our own passions, 
we shall one day possess such souls and bodies 
worthy and well qualified, fit for the Master’s use. 
The process shall be: ‘Redeemed, restored, for- 
given, by Jesus’ precious blood; heirs of His home 
in heaven—Oh, praise our pardoning God.” 
Christian Healing, we have said, is but one of 
God’s supplies in man’s struggle upward to a more 
complete and sinless life. Anyone who has thus 
far followed our argument will, I trust, be ready to 
agree there is a healing power in the universe far 
beyond our comprehension. That God who created 
us is willing to help all His creatures who obey 
His laws is self-evident from those miraculous 
cures which we have given. And we could add 
many more on reliable authority, if I were to quote 
from E. E. Byrum’s Divine Healing, periodicals 
by the score, of verified cases in Banks’ and Hick- 
son’s and Hathaway’s missions. The final point 


CHARACTER FORMATION 159 


I wish to establish is that we may recognize through 
Christian Healing that we are surrounded by God’s 
care, forethought, joy, love and beauty,—and that 
we term the Grace of God. Faith in the Grace of 
God sustains and empowers the will, the conscience 
and the unconscious mind. It draws nigh to us 
the more we draw nigh to it. The life of Jesus 
Christ as portrayed in His tenderness and uplift 
of the fallen, diseased and dead, His living influ- 
ence today, His power alone to forgive sin, give 
us the vital urge to press on toward perfection of 
soul and bodily fitness——impregnable barriers to 
sin and weapons sharpened by faith for the combat 
on the side of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. 


THE END 


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